Book Review: Transformers: The Veiled Threat

Book: Transformers: The Veiled Threat by Alan Dean Foster

Edition: Paperback

Description:

Life on earth has changed forever as humans and their courageous robotic allies, the Autobots, must work together to protect the planet from the destructive forces of the evil Decepticons. At the headquarters of NEST, Tech Sergeant Epps and Captain Lennox both guard and assist cyberneticist Kaminari Ishihara and the brooding Russian AI genius Petr Andronov as they explore the differences between organics and bots. In the meantime, all around them, alliances fray, distrust grows, suspicions mount, and traitors come out of the shadows.

Optimus Prime, the powerful leader of the Autobots who is also part of NEST, is on the defense as battles flare up from Australia to Zimbabwe. But escalating Decepticons attacks will culminate in a final confrontation from which no one -- man or machine -- will emerge unscathed.




Rating: 4 stars

Review:

Even though I know you shouldn't judge a book based on it's movie series because aside from the first Transformers movie each sequel has been excruciatingly worse than the last. I still went into this with the notion that this would not be worth reading. But thankfully, I was wrong because this was a good read.

The Veiled Threat which is set in between the first and second Transformers movies had an interesting story. Following everything that happened in the first movie, a new division NEST was created as a way for Autobots and their human allies (the military and scientists) to work together to stop the Decepticons.

Even though Megatron was dead and his remains were at the bottom of the ocean, that didn't stop the Decepticons from continuing to cause trouble. They were now being lead by Starscream who was trying to strengthen his leadership by getting rid of the Autobots. The first of Starscream's plans had the Autobots along with Captain Lennox, Master Sergeant Epps, Dr. Kaminari Ishihara and Petr Andronov traveling to Zambia. While Starscream's second plan later had the heroes traveling to Italy.

Unbeknownst to Starscream there was another group of Decepticons who were trying to acquire enough energy to bring back Megatron. The Autobots had two separate encounters with them in isolated locations leading to difficult battles.

In a side story, former Sector 7 Agent Seymour Simmons may have been working at his mother's deli but he was continuing to research the Transformers to gather more information about them. He was hoping to see what type of info he could gain from the severed head of Frenzy.

The Veiled Threat provides everything you have come to expect from the Transformers movies: explosive fights between the Autobots and Decepticons, Optimus Prime's leadership, action and adventure but unlike the movies this was centered around an interesting story. This had a fairly good amount of cat and mouse games between the Autobots and Decepticons with a little bit of suspense and espionage sprinkled throughout as well.

I like that the Transformers and human characters were actually given more personality than perhaps what's shown in the films. I also like that the Transformers vehicular forms were shown more than just the small amount you see in the movies. It felt like the Decepticons were an actual threat and that there was a lot at stake with each time the Autobots faced them.

Overall, this was a good read for me and it made me want to see about getting a few more Transformers novels to read.