Book: V – The Crivit Experiment

I have said it before – I was obsessed with V: The Mini-series. The Series that followed had it’s moments but overall it was a disappointment. The book series that came out at that time showed that there was a lot of potential for story in this universe and I tried my best to read them all. I was not successful as a kid and so now I am scouring Ebay for old copies and reading them now. My next book in this attempt was The Crivit Experiment by Allen Wold, the author of my least favorite book – The Pursuit of Diana. I have met and had conversations with Allen Wold about these books and I was overall happy that this book was much better than his previous.
It starts out as a slow burn and in an area that hits close to home for me. It takes place during the initial occupation, I assume because there is not mention of the red dust or any events in the V: The Final Battle series. It takes place in the Carolinas, something he and I both are familiar with – he more so, as he spent much of his time in the NC Triangle area. We go from the Research Traingle, to Chapel Hill and finally to the hills of Appalachia in Asheville.
Wold first takes us into the “high tech” world of the North Carolina Research Triangle of the 80s and speculates on technology that is pretty common place now. I can’t say that tapping computer networks and translating them into audio signals through coding machine code was something that could be done in the 80s but I love the speculation that it could. Then we cross over the UNC Chapel Hill with students upset about the Visitor rule, vandalizing officers and getting arrested. All this leads up to a overly complex “conspiracy” related to a new “weapon” the Visitors would introduce to the war against the Resistance.
The ill-fated series introduced a creature called the Crivit. I hated the name and hated the concept but it was a gimmick to introduce something new. An intelligent approach to it however comes from the book, where concerns of introducing this new predator into the Earth’s environment and it’s impact there of. I think Wold wanted to do more of an intelligent approach but had to keep the page count down. V-books aren’t Star Trek books.
Wold did pretty good with what he had. It is sort of Tremors meets V in the end, with a good old Resistance attack on V compounds to make it feel more V-like. I enjoyed it!