From The Ashes
Timothy Zahn
Titan Books
FROM The Ashes is a prequel novel to Terminator Salvation, a new blockbuster movie out this summer.
The book picks up the franchise’s thread about ten years after the fall of the nuclear bombs that marked the end of Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines.
Bizarrely, given the time lapse, John Connor seems to have slipped down the pecking order of the human resistance to the machines trying to wipe out humanity.
He leads a district cell whose pleas for assistance receive short shrift from the resistance high command.
When Skynet, the computer controlling the machines, sets up a new operation in his neigh-bourhood of one time Los Angeles, it gives Connor and his band of fighters a chance to make the leaders take notice.
The power of the Terminator in storytelling is the machine’s near indestructibility and focus on killing.
But From The Ashes throws up dozens of them and author Timothy Zahn never really solves the problem of maintaining the Terminator’s scariness while Connor’s crew turn them into scrap.
It also fails to establish Connor in my mind as a great military leader who will save mankind – but maybe that is the new movie’s job.
While I enjoyed From The Ashes, it also has something of the robot about it. The book is functional and readable, but lacks a little soul.
Terminator Salvation: From The Ashes is available in paperback in bookshops and online for £6.99.
–David Connop Price
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