Released as an unofficial official "companion" to Amazon's "The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power" series (or so it seems to me), the editor of this volume does an excellent job of compiling all of Tolkien's previously published work regarding Númenor (it's history, culture, and geography) as well as related material regarding the wider events of the Second Age of Middle-earth. Beautifully illustrated by the incomparable Alan Lee (though I do wish that his pencil sketches could have been reproduced a little darker to bring out more detail for aging, tired eyes like mine).

I have two big problems with this book: (1) The derelict ship with its cargo of alien eggs isn't found until half-way through the book, and then the story fast-forwards to a point when the xenomorphs have already pretty much overrun the colony of Hadley's Hope. I would have preferred the discovery happening earlier and more time having been spent describing the escalation of the alien threat, from first facehugger to the colony being lost. (2) It was an odd choice of the author to describe a platoon of Colonial Marines being stationed at and fighting against the alien assault on the colony on LV-426 when absolutely no mention of a prior marine presence was mentioned by any character in the movie "Aliens." Better in my opinion to have changed the marines to Colonial Marshals, as established in the Alien: Isolation video game.

A fascinating story bogged down by an overly academic approach and writing style. Four stars for the thoroughness of the retelling, minus one and a half for the presentation of the material.

Could've used another proof-reading pass (or two); quite a few textual errors that should have been caught and corrected. The artwork is very evocative, though I wish the artist had been willing or able to capture the actors' likenesses more consistently.

Well written but ultimately forgettable sci-fi techno-thriller, ostensibly set in the "Alien" universe. I was hoping that this novel would bridge the gap between Prometheus and Alien: Covenant (especially since there was never any English-language novelization of the former), as well as explain more about how and why the Covenant colonization mission came about, and the choosing of its destination, Origae-6. Instead, I got a somewhat vaguely sketched conspiracy/cult, determined to prevent the Covenant mission from ever leaving Earth by executing a number of botched plots involving kidnapping, sabotage, and more. A bit of a struggle to get through, really.

Addendum (Sep 24, 2024): Having read Alan Dean Foster's "The Director Should've Shot You: Memoirs of the Film Trade" (2021), I now know that Foster's intention when first presented with the opportunity to write a prequel to Alien: Covenant was indeed to write a story bridging that film and Prometheus. However, restrictions were put on him regarding what he could include in his novel, the primary one being that it couldn't have feature any of the titular creatures in it. Hence the story we wound up with. Shame.

Competently written, but dull--the one thing a Conan story should never be. I could've given it another star for the inclusion of Robert E. Howard's Conan tale "Red Nails," for which Blood of the Serpent is a prequel, but opted to rate the book based only on the main story.

Rating is for the "Electric Dreams" Case File only (the one thing from the box that I read cover-to-cover). The boxed set as a whole I'd give four and a half stars.

While the stories and supplementary material in this volume are fine reads, and the illustrations by Pete Von Sholly vibrant and evocative, the book is riddled with typographical errors (moreso, I think, than the other volumes in the Lovecraft Illustrated series). Most distressing, however, is the loss of over a dozen paragraphs from Robert Bloch's "The Shambler From the Stars", an egregious oversight that will hopefully be corrected in later printings.