Friedman and Greenberger...those two would fit in great at McDonalds with names like that.
Remember the movie, 'Predator'? You know, the one with Arnold Schwarzenegger. Well, that happens to be one of my all-time favorite movies. I loved the way the alien killing machine hunted down and slaughtered each of Arnie's team but was outwitted at the end. That movie was followed up with 'Predator 2' and due to one of them being killed in hand-to-hand combat with Danny Glover the aura was shattered and I never felt the same about the franchise again. Then the predators became really week after we found out their Achilles Heel...young girls. Aye, nothing can make a predator realize defeat like these words do, "I'm Chris Hansen for Dateline NBC. What are you doing here?" Oh, hold on, wrong kind of predator. My bad.
So there I was perusing Ebay when I seen a lot of four Predator books and thinking back to my love of the original movie I decided to bid on the books, with seven seconds to go of course, in the hope that the novels were better than the motion picture offerings we have endured since the success of the original movie. And you know, the first of these books that I recently completed, 'Predator: Flesh and Blood' wasn't too bad. From the back of the book...

"Humans have all but destroyed the earth. Relentless in their pursuit of exploitable natural resources, they now move through the outer planets, leaving a path of destruction behind them. One family - the Ciejek clan - has seized control and grown rich from their unconscionable plunders. But with power comes corruption, and one son flees to ravaged earth in an effort to rebuild not only the planet, but his own tainted life. His respite is cut short, however, when the family patriarch dies and the prodigal son is drawn back into the snake pit for the reading of the will, intent on preserving what little dignity is left of his father's memory. The surviving members of the Ciejek clan are at each other's throats, father against son, cousin against cousin. One side enlists the help of the fearsome Predators to settle the score...but the savagery the warriors unleash is far beyond what even the Ciejek family could have possibly imagined."

The first major impression I got from reading the first few chapters of this book was how many characters there were and keeping up with who was who became a little bit difficult. It didn't help that no-one seemed to have a conventional name (Andar, Sildar, Abelkis, Laban etc) and these weren't even the Predators! However, even though it took quite a while I finally got comfortable with who was who.
Another issue I had with the characters was that I never really found myself caring about them and who would eventually triumph. Andar is the main character but he's very bland and I felt no connection to him which led to me cheering on his evil cousin who was trying to kill him when the author wanted me to build up sympathy for Andar. Then I found myself cheering on the Predators trying to kill the evil cousin. Then I found myself wanting the Predators to just slaughter everyone. Ever notice how the Predator looks like Lil Wayne?!?
The Predators. There are two clans. These clans mirror the two warring families that the story revolves around and so we have "good" Predators who have some morals and some "bad" Predators who just want to kill. As with the humans I found myself having no connection for the moralistic Predators (if you're familiar with Star Trek:The Next Generation then the moralistic bunch are akin to Worf whereas the out and out killers are like Klingons in general...no surprise then that both these authors have written several ST:TNG novels) because I see them as killing machines and having a Predator start justifying and reasoning his actions just didn't make sense to me.
Although the book had its problems, I'm not looking for a lesson on keeping our planet green in a Predator novel, the story wasn't too bad and the action scenes were fun and well written. In fact there was certainly enough in this book that led to a decent read but its flaws are many and they detracted from the overall enjoyment all the way through to the predictable ending. In regards to the ending, with about a third of the book remaining I was thinking, "Please, don't go there. Don't end that way." And then it went there and ended like that. :( ( )