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Rating:  -
Battlestar Galactica: The Cylons' Secret, by Craig Shaw Gardner was a surprisingly fun book. I had reservations, as it's been a while since I've watched the new show. But with the first chapter I was hooked.
The Cylons' Secret is a prequel to the new Battlestar Galactica series. It not only gave a little bit of background on a few main characters, but also had an exciting plot.
Set years after the Cylon War, where the Colonial's artificial intelligent machines revolted, a raider ship stumbles upon a long-forgotten station where humans and Cylons seem to co-exist. But all is not as it appears. And when the Battlestar Galactica comes to investigate, a young William Adama must uncover the secrets before it's too late to save them all.
Gardner did a wonderful job of developing an exciting and suspenseful story with diverse and interesting characters. This was a fun and fast-paced read that any fan of science fiction should enjoy.
Rating:  -
Utter crap. Reads like the outline to a bad fan-fiction movie, complete with a girl-crush from the plucky young heroine on a young Tom Zarek.
For anyone that seriously enjoys the show, you need to skip this "book" and pretend it doesn't exist. Reading it will be painful and annoying - thankfully it is a very quick read so the torture doesn't drag on too long.
On a more serious note, it is written for preteens with a crude, simplistic plot and nearly non-existent character development. There are gaping plot holes and serious deviations from established canon that are distracting. While it claims to "based upon" the re-imagined series, the word "loosely" should be included in that statement.
Rating:  -
Before I get too far, I'd just like to say I only got to page 77 of this book. If it picked up and got better by page 78, then I missed it. Unfortunately, the frst quarter of this book was a snoozer.
If I had picked up a phone book I'd have a better chance of finding people I knew that reading this thing. Set 20 years in the past (ugh) the author tries to make a lot of his own square pegs fit into the BSG round holes . Too bad they just don't fit.
This book seemed more like a rewrite of a 1960s Star Trek episode, trying to be shoehorned into BSG -- 20 years in the past.
Rating: -
This book is nothing more than a hack job, intended to cash in on the Battlestar Galactica name. The author has no regard for Battlestar Galactica continuity, and violates it left and right.
He attempts to work events into the backstories of Adama, Tigh, Zarek, and the Colonies that simply don't fit - we're supposed to believe that news of the Cylons lurking about in a Dreadnaught ("close to ten times the size of Galactica") wouldn't leak from the crews of 6 battlestars to the rest of the populace, right after we're told that the Admiral couldn't keep the CIC personnel on the Galactica from blabbing to the rest of the crew. Yet, we're told in the TV series that nobody has seen the Cylons since the armistice - that's a critical backstory element.
Cylon Wariors from the period of the war look like the 1978 series' Centurions, not like the more modern versions that Shaw describes.
The Colonial High Command would not have been as lackadaisical about computer control of the Colonial military, had they known that a Cylon Dreadnaught was still out there at the edges of human space - even 20 years after the fact. Especially when they had been concerned enough to send 6 battlestars after it.
I can only guess that this was a manuscipt that the author had sitting around, in which he replaced his own characters with the BSG characters - labelling this as Battlestar Galactica is a fraud. I haven't been this angry about a book in a long, long time - unless you're short of material to burn in a fireplace, avoid this one... you won't know how bad a sucker job you missed. And if you see Craig Shaw Gardner, tell him I want my three hours back.
Rating: -
This is the first tie-in novel to the critically acclaimed SciFi re-imagined Battlestar Galactica TV show but I doubt this book will garner such praise. It was just OK, I'd probably grade it a B-.
THE GOOD - The story is a prequel and the setup/reveal chapters describing the Cylon revolt were absolutely terrific. The "Cylon Cuisinart" killing a "June Cleaver" was my favorite part of the book. The Cylon Revolt should have been the main storyline.
THE BAD - The main story is crap. It read like a bad Star Trek episode. Much closer in tone to the 1970s show than the current BSG incarnation. Lots of pages dedicated to characters not in the TV show. As a professed BSG nerd, I felt it broke the established BSG continuity/back-story in several places. I don't know if these novels will be considered canonical or not.
THE UGLY - The Cylons do some nasty modifications to some humans. I won't give spoilers away here but it may somehow tie into Season 3 of BSG.
OVERALL - Worth reading, mildly entertaining but keep your expectations at comic book not Hemingway level.
So say we all! - Brenthrax
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