V: East Coast Crisis (Book #2)


 The second V book was East Coast Crisis, a chunky title set (as the title says) in New York rather than the Californa locale loved by television production companies at the time. 

This one says that it was published in September 1984 in the US (by Pinnacle) and then April 1985 in the UK (by NEL) 

A co-write between Ann Crispin and Howard Weinstein, at 300 pages, this is the chunks of the spin-off books, and runs simultaneously with the events of the original two mini-series and thus the original book. 

It's fair to say therefore that there's little opportunity for surprise. We see a lot of plot points from the original series repeated, only with a New York twist. The visitors are our friends / they're converting people / what's happening to scientists etc etc. 

I think its also true to suggest that the characters in this book probably suffer in comparison with the ones from the TV show - we can all visualise Mike Donovan and Juliet Parrish in our heads because we've spent time with them on the television- that's not quite the same with Pete Forsythe, Denise Daltrey and Lauren Stewart. 

Within those constraints, I think Crispin and Weinstein do a good job of delivering a page turner. One of the things they do well is to flesh out some of the events that we had previously seen only in passing - the Secretary General of the UN plays more of a part in this book than he did in the original story, and momentary guest appearances and references to the like of Donovan do help to illustrate that there's a shared universe and that this is all part of a bigger story. 

I enjoyed this book - although it's clearly delivered to meet the needs for more V merchandise, it's one of the better books, and its probably stronger because it has to stick to the story that we've already seen rather than being allowed to diverge into flights of fancy. 


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