V: The Second Generation [Kindle Edition]

Twenty years ago, they arrived in 50 gigantic motherships offering their peace and universal friendship to Earth. They said they had come because their world was dying and desperately needed our help to manufacture chemicals found on our world in return for sharing their technology, cures for diseases and all the fruits of their knowledge. Skeptical of the Visitors intentions, a collective coalition of scientists became the unwitting scapegoats of a conspiracy against the Visitors and soon a state of martial law was imposed. A small but growing band of underground freedom fighters had organized into the Resistance led in Los Angeles by Dr. Juliette Parrish. News cameraman Mike Donovan had infiltrated the motherships to discover their clandestine truth and with the help of Visitor Fifth Columnist Martin who revealed the Visitors' true horrific intentions that they had come to rape our planet of its most precious resource - water - and to harvest human beings for food. The Resistance struck back and won a small but decisive victory against the Visitors and sent out a distress signal deep into space directed towards their homeworld near Sirius in hopes of it reaching one of the Visitors' adversaries who might answer the beacon and come to help them stave off the invasion.

Twenty years later, that call has been answered. The world under Visitor control is at its most critical point. Fifty percent of the water in the Earth's oceans have been depleted leaving behind a vast barren salt bed along the floor of the Pacific basin. The Golden Gate bridge now suspends atop two large peaks above the once aqueous San Francisco Bay. An entire generation has grown up under Visitor occupation and has bought into the lies and propaganda with unquestioning obedience to The Visitor Way and the apathetic human race have become complacent and submissive through the coercion of the Teammates - those humans that serve the Visitor Youth Corps and the Players - the corrupt collaborators who have betrayed their own kind to satisfy their own personal ambitions. The operation that Martin had said would take nearly a generation to complete was accelerating rapidly now with little opposition after the Resistance had been decimated by Commandant Diana's Great Purge in 1999 and with only a few years left until the Earth would become a barren, desolate planet devoid of all life.

Enter the Zedti - a humanoid race evolved from an insectoidial alien species who respond to the signal at our most desperate hour by sending three advance "emissaries" to make contact with the Resistance in the form of a pair of strangely humanoid females named Kayta and Bryke and a humanoid male named Ayden who are prepared to launch a counter-invasion force waiting in the wings to strike against their old enemies the Visitors whom they had defeated once before and rescue us from their oppression. But are their intentions benevolent, or do they have their own more diabolical plans for us and are we simply trading one dictatorship for an equal or even greater oppressor?

Kenneth Johnson's narrative is engaging and entertaining and manages to deftly interleave socio-political themes relevant to present day issues of counter-terrorism and political apathy as relevant as his brilliant allegory of neo-fascist takeover akin to the Nazi Holocaust that he employed in creating his V - The Original TV Miniseries. However, as a lifelong V fan, the biggest challenges I had to come to terms with while reading Kenny's book, is ignoring the problem of conflicting continuity between his original mini-series and the events of V - The Final Battle and V - The Complete Series of which he had no involvement with, and the fans are asked to simply accept the fact that those events had never even existed. Even more, the fates of several key characters established in Kenny's original story like Elias, who was killed off in the Series, and Robin Maxwell, who was impregnated by the Visitor Youth Leader Brian and gave birth to the half-breed Elizabeth, are overlooked or simply disregarded. In Kenny's mind, all of that never happened and many may welcome the idea that Elizabeth, the Star Child, doesn't save the human race with her hokey magical alien superpowers, the Visitors weren't defeated by the Red Dust, Robert Maxwell wasn't killed trying to help the Resistance commandeer the mothership, and Martin didn't die and come back as his zygote twin brother Philip who just happened to wear an identical human-looking mask. On the other hand we unfortunately never meet the stone-cold mercenary Ham Tyler nor his associate Chris Farber who joined up with the Resistance or other memorable characters indigenous to the series like Kyle Bates.

By disregarding the continuity of V: The Final Battle and V: The Series, there is, for better (*cough* Star Child) and for worse (*cough* Ham Tyler) gaps of unexplained and contradictory continuity between the Original and The Second Generation. Willy's true reptilian nature wasn't revealed to Harmony until V: The Final Battle when the Resistance captured and exposed him in front of a disbelieving Harmy and forced him to confess the truth to her. Complicating things even more, Harmony was killed during the Final Battle. Disregarding those events, the reader must make the supposition that Willy inevitably revealed the truth to her somehow and irregardless of which maintained her indiscriminate feelings toward him and they married and had a half-breed son named Ted and the reader is forced to accept the circumstances of altered continuity twenty years later as-is. With the introduction of the half-breed culture of Dregs at times it felt more like I was reading a page from Kenny's other series Alien Nation, not V.

As much as I would love to see a Second Generation of V revived, I don't think, with all due respect to Kenny, that this story, in its current form, should be used as the basis of a new mini-series because of the problems inherent with ignoring the continuity which old-school V fans might find jarring and confusing. Perhaps this is why initial plans for a new mini-series announced a few years ago by NBC have remained on indefinite hold and Warner Bros. felt like they could still profit from publishing Kenny's book while surreptitiously gauging fan interest in a possible revival or perhaps have their own agenda for a "re-imagining" of V ala "Battlestar Galactica" which I think would be a huge mistake because it would be a betrayal to a generation of loyal fans who, like myself, grew up in the 80's and grew attached to those characters and the actors who portrayed them. Still, I'll take Kenny's version of V the Second Generation over an outright remake or "re-imagining" any day and I'm all for getting behind a revival of V that would reunite original cast members Mark Singer, Faye Grant, Jane Badler, Michael Ironside, Robert Englund, Blair Tefkin, et al, but if and only if it's my generation of V.

I read the previous reviews before I purchased the book, and I was well prepared. I accepted that the writer chose to deny the existence of V: The Final Battle and the Series which allowed me to approach the book with an open mind. All in all I'm glad I bought the book as it was an enjoyable read. I also agree with many of the gripes of other reviewers.

It's dreadfully obvious that the book was written AFTER a screenplay. I'd even go so far as to say it was hastily put together. I imagine the writer was not able to devote as much time and talent to its writing and was pressured by a deadline. Johnson does provide "sufficient" depth so that anyone reading it who hasn't seen the previous telecasts isn't left in the dark. I was also able to ignore the constant "jumping" from one seen to the next. Even tho most of the time there was no warning and I usually had to reread entire pages to see where it jumped. Occasionally some "jumps" are obvious, as the writer bolds the first sentence.

I'd have to say that the most annoying aspect in the book is it's lack of time. As others have written slightly about it, I feel they didn't describe it enough. There is NO mention of time except for a few instances in which the writer tells you if the sun is shining or stars are twinkling. I've had to reread several pages at a time to get a feel for when the "day" ended, and the "night" began. You'll find yourself imagining one or the other, until the writer tells u at the END of the scene. It's very easy to get lost in the time line, and very frustrating when you have to go back and reread sections at a time.

While the writer provides sufficient depth in some areas, it's horridly lacking in others. Reviewers before me have pointed out that the story ignores various prominent characters from the first series. I've come to the conclusion that once the movie is released, the confusion will evaporate. The book describes a memorial to people lost during the "great purge" as described in the book. Tho the writer only indicates to 2 people on the memorial, I'm assuming that when the movie is shown, we'll see the faces of the missing characters.

On the positive side I'm pleased at how easy the book is to read. The language and vernacular used is as easy to understand as a Harry Potter book. You may however want to censure the book from younger readers, as it does have strong sexual depictions. Speaking of, I was pleasantly surprised at the inclusion of gay characters in the novel. Johnson writes the gay characters as if they are "simply" gay, and pays no special attention to them. He does however, give them equal inclusion in the story line. Johnson plays this off very well and I thank him for not playing into other stereotypes.

Each of the characters are believable and engaging, this is another great aspect that many other authors too often miss. While I agree with others that parts of the story line are predictable, I also assert that every story has a certain predictability. The great thing is that this book is very suspenseful, and a majority of it does not unfold as you may suspect.

I found the ending to the story to be extremely satisfying, however there are some "holes". I also enjoy the that even tho there is a conclusion, it's also a cliff hanger. I have no doubt that if this book and movie is successful, johnson will continue the story line as there is ample room to do so. All in all I'm glad I bought the book and enjoyed reading it. I do have to remove a star as it's not perfect, tho I imagine that subsequent editions will fix the "jumping without notice" problem.

Allow me to get straight to the point: DO NOT read "V: The Second Generation" by Kenneth Johnson unless you're a diehard "V" fan looking for a fresh story set in the "V" universe. And even then, either buy it only after it's in the discount bin or if you can get it from your local library.

Why am I being so harsh? Because I was among those who was revved up to hear about new life in the "V" universe, and eagerly purchased this book, even after its release was delayed multiple times (an obvious "red alert" to be suspicious of its quality, in retrospect). So, what did I get (and what you will get if you disregard my advice in this review's lead)?

I got a reintroduction to the "V" universe, albeit one where the second "V" TV miniseries never took place, nor the short-lived TV series or any of the previous books that came out in the 1980s. Reading this book brought back a lot of fond memories -- but that was it. Memories. Nothing more. And those memories were for what had been, not what Johnson envisioned in this alternate "V" timeline.

Beside that, I got shallow, cardboard-cutout characters that I had no chance to "bond with" before the majority of them met various, gruesome ends. I got a plot that had holes so ridiculous I was left debating whether to break down into hysterical laughter or to simply shake my head with disbelief. I usually did the latter.

Furthermore, I got a plot so simplistic and writing so amateurish -- yes, amateurish is the proper word, even though Johnson is a published author and the mind behind other creative content, such as "Alien Nation" -- that I thought more than once, "How in God's name did Johnson's editors let this get through?" Then again, maybe he didn't have editors or, at the very least, editors with spines.

Last, but not least, I got a book whose author seemed to relish in not only killing off his cardboard characters, but child characters as well. At least three such characters meet such sad/heroic ends. If Johnson was attempting to get his readers to feel an emotional loss, he failed with at least me. It's hard to feel a connection with any character -- child or adult -- who's barely developed before becoming a convenient plot device to move the story forward (i.e., usually by getting killed). If anything, Johnson, you succeeded in getting a sole emotion out of me -- anger. I was left with the distinct impression that you simply offed the child characters as a cheap way to get readers emotionally invested in the story. Well, kind sir, you failed miserably.

All of the above said, I feel it's necessary for me to point out that, in my reviews at Amazon, I am rarely this "down" on an author (check my other reviews for confirmation of this). Unfortunately, Kenneth Johnson stooped low enough to earn this negative review. It takes a lot to get this sort of review out of me and, to my regret (for dollars and time lost to reading this tome), Johnson met the criteria.

In closing, I cannot in good conscious recommend "V: The Second Generation." If you must read it, do so after getting it at your local library or the discount book bin. Don't say you weren't warned.

M. Keck