Jason X #2: The Experiment [Mass Market Paperback]

Okay, I know the title Jason X, just means Friday the 13th Ten, but when you pick up this book take it to mean "a fairly long sci-fi/action novel with mild slasher overtones". This book takes very little from the actualy Friday the 13th series, and instead goes off in to a more action oriented, sci fi based story that uses everyones favorite insane killing machine, Jason. Now, Jason is almost unrecognizable in this book, but in the context of the book it works fine.

The story is as follows. Jason falls from space in to Veronica Lake, right next to the Three Mile Island Nuclear Power Plant. Some of the nanos from Jason X that helped rebuild him are stuck in his remains, namely his mask, and using the nuclear material being dripped off from the power plant, they rebuild him. He then goes on to slaughter a good portion of the Three Mile Island staff, and a few protesters leaving Lynn and Rena Sofira, are two most interesting characters, alive. Then Jason is frozen and shipped off to an underground lab, and the real story starts... kind of.

Let's start with this books strengths. It is very well written, with some very witty and fun humor. There are scenes where characters end up naked, when they shouldn't be, but it works in the context of the story, and brings in a bit of the camp from the movie series that normally would have been lost otherwise. One such scene is early on in the book where Rena, to get Jason's attention, removes her shirt, and ends up being chased down by the enraged monster. Stuff like that helps the book from sinking away to far from the series. Also, some of the characters are interesting, most notably Lynn and Rena. There are also some decent gory killings early on, but sadly those are abandoned for the second half (the main part) of the novel.

Now for the weaker parts. I won't say bad, because they work, but not in a series that is connected with Friday the 13th. For starters, there are WAY to many characters. This would be okay if they were equally focused on, but the sheer number of them make it impossible, and instead we are left with a lot of loose ends that never get tied up, and if the ending tells me anything, they never will be. Also, the slasher element is absent after the first hundred or so pages, and doesn't show up again until, maybe, page 390. When it does show up, it has almost no effect on the actual story, and really just works to help tie up the ending. Also, the interesting characters, such as the two mentioned before, as well as a few other characters that come in later, are ignored for the most part, with the attention given to characters who really hold no real significance to the story. This book is not short, clocking in at 410 pages, and could easily have been chopped down a good deal. Hopefully Black Flame gets a better editor for the next book.

The writing itself is very well done. The characters are interesting for the most part, and the book is never really slow, but it never really has a point. It also feels like the first half (the first hundred pages) is horribly short changed. The massacre at Three Mile Island should have been a book itself, with more attention payed to suspense, but instead the interesting part, the actual massacre, is rushed through. The author does this again with the lab segment once the action starts. It's disappointing to a degree because the set ups are actually interesting, and could have worked very well in a slasher medium. Instead she opted for big action, lots of guns, and mass death. It really ends up hurting the book in the long run, because the tension, and the action never build up to much. Hopefully she gets a better hang on this in the third book (Jason X being the first). But only time will tell. Still, I will continue to read the series, mainly because it is just that, readable, but still a bit raw.

A Jason X book series. That sounded a little edgy at first, but I guess New Line Cinema will do just about anything they can to make money. Despite myself and the fact that I thought turning the concept into a book series was completely stupid, I bought the book at it took me about five days to read all the way through. I was mildly surprised, but I came to find that the whole thing was just like reading a long, weird science fiction soap opera, with a little military action, some gunfire, and guest starring our own anti-life anti-hero, Jason Voorhees. I won't ruin anything about the book for you, but I will tell you that way too much time is spent describing some characters that are completely ignored throughout throughout the rest of the novel, which was an example of either bad story construction or just bad editing. All in all, "Jason X: The Experiment" was a good read, but nothing to get excited about, and it made the author look a little bit like a Stephen King wannabe. Thanks for reading.

Well, to start off, I thought this was a good sequel to Jason X, with the rebuilt Uberjason being captured by scientists in the future and experimented on by a government wanting a supersoldier, until Jason gets loose and all hell starts breaking loose again. The potential for a good old-fashioned slasher was quite present, though the sci-fi angle was interesting too, as the scientists tried to understand the merging of machine and flesh now present in Jason, which is apparently supposed to be impossible. But then, Jason's always had a knack for pulling off the impossible, hasn't he?

Unfortunately, the part that made it hard for me to make it through this book was the rather excessive amount of detail of each and every character and object in the background, which is why I'm only giving it four stars, because the sheer amount of detail sometimes made it hard to continue.

This is something I've come to expect with certain authors, but when the action finally begins, and the blood-bath begins, I found myself making the same surprised noises as when I watch Jason's movies, so while slow at times, I did enjoy the book. If you're a Jason fan, and you enjoyed Jason X, as I did, then by all means, read this sequel.

› Go to Amazon.com to see all 6 reviews  3.3 out of 5 stars