‘Transformers: Exodus (The Official History of the War For Cybertron)’ – Alex Irvine (Del Rey)

I’m not a huge Transformers fan; my involvement runs to watching two of the films (the brilliant 80’s film and ‘not quite as brilliant but still quite cool’ 2007 version) and sneaking a look at my little brother’s comics once he’d finished reading them. There’s nothing more fun though than watching (or reading about) giant robots smashing the hell out of each other so reading ‘Transformers: Exodus’ was a bit of a no-brainer really...

Like I said, I’m not a huge Transformers fan but there’s still something a little odd about a book that styles itself as ‘The Official History of the War for Cybertron’ when the franchise itself has been running since the early eighties and any history arising from that is about as ‘official’ as you’re going to get. Someone left a comment, next to my earlier post about this, saying that ‘Exodus’ will more than likely only be canonical with the forthcoming Transformers video game. If that’s the case then fair enough I guess, might be worth bearing in mind though...
Enough of that though, on with the book itself...

‘... every Cybertronian has the right to self determination’

You think you’d have a pretty good guess at which Cybertronian would say something like this... but you’d be wrong. So what happened to make a revolutionary with high ideals become the focal point of a scourge that threatens to bleed Cybertron dry of energy at the very least? And how did a lowly librarian become Cybertron’s last hope? ‘Transformers: Exodus’ answers these questions amongst others, giving it’s readers a first hand account of the war between Autobots and Decepticons and the tumultuous last days of Cybertron itself...

‘Transformers: Exodus’ is one of those books that is hobbled by the fact that you know how it’s going to end. Even if you haven’t read the comics or seen the cartoons, the title is a dead giveaway as to what the last few pages will have in store (it’s not a spoiler at all to say that there’s an ‘exodus’ in the offing...) In this kind of situation you really need something that will take the place of an ending that could go either way, something that will hook the reader and keep them interested despite everything else. Alex Irvine gets it right but he also gets it wrong at the same time, at least as far as I was concerned...

The trade off for knowing how things are going to end is that we get a fresh look at two leading figures in the Transformers universe, Optimus Prime and Megatron. Irvine lets his readers have a real close look at these characters, detailing their rise and fall as well as the relationship that they share. I enjoyed reading this as Irvine didn’t spare any of the detail here (impressive seeing as my ARC copy of the book is only four hundred and seventy six pages long); you really get to find out what’s going on in their heads and how this will affect the future of an entire planet. Cybertron is also laid out very well on the page, fans should recognise a few landmarks while newcomers will have plenty to get to grips with.

What I wasn’t so keen on was the war itself and how it was portrayed on the page. Don’t get me wrong, you still get robots laying the hurt on each other in all the best ways from the initial bursts of insurrection all the way through to all out war. You can feel the beating that these guys take and the introduction of characters like Omega Supreme make for some spectacular moments!
What I wasn’t so keen on though was Irvine’s decision to switch his descriptions of the war from Optimus Prime’s perspective on the front line to the journal accounts of the historian Alpha Trion.
In theory, it’s a great way of getting a large of chunk of action and events into a book that shouldn’t be able to hold it all and on that score this approach hits the target. What I found though was that the combination of high octane action followed by drier historical recounting just didn’t gel at all for me. It was almost a case of getting two stories when there should have only been the one... The pace never really had a chance to settle into something constant and I had real trouble getting into the flow...

I also had issues with the book that, to be fair, are more about my only really being a casual fan and not knowing too much about the background of the Transformers universe. I think that long term fans may read the book and see a natural and logical progression to what the Autobots have to face based on what they already know. What I found though was a confusing muddle of ‘we’ve defeated this obstacle but now we have to defeat something even bigger!’ that only seemed to serve the purpose of driving the story for another few pages. I’m prepared to write this off to my lack of background knowledge but, even so, I wasn’t keen on what I felt was the story being dragged out when it didn’t need to be...

‘Transformers: Exodus’ has a lot going for it in terms of it being a light and entertaining read that worked for me over a couple of trips to work and back. I had issues with its structure though and was left feeling that someone who was more a fan would get more out of it than I did...

Seven and a Quarter out of Ten