So I ran across a name in the Covenant that I was surprised to see. I actually did a double take to make sure I read that right. There still hasn't even been any mention of the Decepticons or Megatron yet... well the one who isn't a Prime and yet they've mentioned Galvatron already.

 

Yup, they've taken a leaf out of IDW's book and made Galvatron his own guy, completely unconnected to Megatron.

 

So here's something confusing... during the war with the Quintessons the perspective suddenly changes. It's suppose to be written as if Alpha Trion was the author but the book suddenly changes to refer to Alpha Trion in the third person. What's up with that? Did Alpha Trion give the book to someone else for a while and forget to mention it or is he going crazy in his old age and not realizing that he's talking about himself.

 

I would guess it was the Covenant it's self? As it has been known to write it's self at times and not a editing typo by some human that would never have access to such a power and alien artifact like the Covenant  .

 

Just finished reading through the whole book.

The author's inexperience (with regard to novel-style writing) shows in a couple of places, but overall the book is very nicely presented. Some of the blanks she fills into the mythology made me scratch my head, but with any TF continuity it's difficult to try to write in all of the "key" characters, groups and events and not leave any out. I was particularly disappointed in the lack of a lineage of Primes in this continuity, and it instead left Sentinel as the sole predecessor to Optimus since the original Thirteen (in-joke for those who've read it). The story seems to focus the first 50% on the original 13 Primes, jumps through introducing key familiar characters, sets the back story for Prime Beast Hunters, and then quickly glosses through the events of the Exodus/Exiles novels.

The physical quality of the book is extremely good, much better than most hardcovers I've seen - I'd put it on par with collectors' edition video game strategy guides. The cover art is quite nice, and the art within it is also good, but not Figueroa or Guidi (very much inspired by the WfC/FoC character sketch style). The display case is also OK, it probably jacked the price up $15-20 overall, but I may find a good place to decorate with it once I set up my man cave.

Overall score from me: 7/10

Short/summary version: Worth reading, quite a bit of good content for an era in the mythos that doesn't have much established history, but a little lacking in its treatment of the familiar characters.

 

You mean Justina Robson? That bit in the beginning under Solus Prime where Alpha Trion apologizes to females for having their pronouns applied to the lesser of their race is actually a lot funnier when you realize it's actually a woman who wrote it. I think it could be considered sexist if a man wrote that but having a female author just makes it funny as hell.

 

So I just finished the Covenant...

I have a theory about Megatron that I think deserves it's own thread.

Also on the last page it mentions Ultra Magnus and Prowl being around the well when Optimus went in but Ultra Magnus I believe was in stasis at the time and Prowl was never even in the series. They mention him talking but there was no com signal that came in at that moment either. So what the hell? The picture doesn't show either of them being there but it's written in the text that they were there. I'm thinking it was meant to be Smokescreen since they share the same mold but other than that no one who was actually there could have possibly been accidentally swapped out for Prowl.

There were a few things like what was going on in Optimus' mind that was kind of interesting because he never actually talks about that stuff but other than that when the book got into recapping the series it got kind of boring compared to the rest of the book.

 

After this, honestly there obviously is no "alligned", it's just a sad joke perpetuated by hasbro and hope.

 

  That should be on the cover of the book.

 

The back quotes that SHOULD have been:

Optimus Prime: "t's just a sad joke perpetuated by hasbro and hope."

Aaron Archer: "......................*snort*"

Simon Furman; "It's surplus to requirements!"

 

I don't think the idea of the Alligned continuity was a bad idea, but rather the execution.

 

I couldn't agree more.


I honestly think the comics do a better job of honoring everything and fitting it ALL together.

 

damn! That costs a lot for a book.. :/ Still can't wait to read it!

 

I have a question as I don't own the book. What's up with Elita One and Moonracer? I heard that one was a helicopter and I don't know about Elita here. Please help.

 

A year later, but Spoilers below if anyone hasn't read this yet....





Wow, so finally a year later I got this for Christmas 2014. Purchased it on Black Friday for under $40. Having avoided any spoilers all along I was really surprised that 13 turned out to be Optimus. It blew my mind and....I like it! I was really thrilled to read the first 2/3's of this book, I've craved Cybertronian history for so long. After that as it focused more on events from the TF: Prime show I started to lose interest. I mean you could take the first parts of the book and have that be your original G1 origin and be okay with it for the most part. The Unicron inside Earth thing might be hard to swallow, but whatever. Really with something like this, it's up to each person to decide what they want to believe. Eventually the aspects that focus so heavily on the WFC/FoC/Novels/TF: Prime will become obsolete as another new iteration of Transformers comes along.

What this book does is introduce more ideas into the mythos that can (again) later be adapted to the overall Transformers origin story. Besides being so heavily tied to the TF: Prime show (which I really did enjoy on it's own, for what that's worth) the only other thing that really bothered me was the author's writing. This book could have really used an extra round of editing, as her prose at times was very confusing and in some situations a sentence made absolutely no sense to me. Oh yeah, and I'm not sure if I like the idea that Primus and Unicron were originally the same being with a super personality disorder who later separated into two distinct entities. It's an interesting take, but ultimately it just leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

So what needs to happen someday is for another book (with art) to be made of all the best of Robert's MTMTE history and origins along with aspects of this book's first Thirteen Primes. I'd buy that too.