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    The X-Files Origins: Devil's Advocate
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    The X-Files Origins: Devil's Advocate
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    The X-Files Origins: Devil's Advocate
    Ebook392 pages6 hours

    The X-Files Origins: Devil's Advocate

    By Jonathan Maberry

    3.5/5

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    About this ebook

    How did Dana Scully become a skeptic? The X-Files Origins has the answers in this young adult, science-fiction origin story by New York Times-bestselling author Jonathan Maberry.

    In the spring of 1979, fifteen-year-old Dana Scully has bigger problems than being the new girl in school. Dana has always had dreams. Sometimes they’ve even come true. Until now, she tried to write this off as coincidence. But ever since her father’s military career moved the family across the country to Craiger, Maryland, the dreams have been more like visions. Vivid, disturbing, and haunted by a shadowy figure who may be an angel . . . or the devil.

    When a classmate who recently died in a car accident appears before Dana, her wounds look anything but accidental. Compelled by a force she can’t name, Dana uncovers even more suspicious deaths—and must face the danger­ous knowledge that evil is real.

    But when a betrayal of faith makes her question everything, she begins to put her faith in being a skeptic.

    An Imprint Book

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherMacmillan Publishers
    Release dateJan 3, 2017
    ISBN9781250119599
    Author

    Jonathan Maberry

    Jonathan Maberry is a New York Times bestselling and five-time Bram Stoker Award–winning author, anthology editor, comic book writer, executive producer, and writing teacher. He is the creator of V Wars (Netflix) and Rot & Ruin (Alcon Entertainment). His books have been sold to more than two dozen countries. To learn more about Jonathan, visit him online at jonathanmaberry.

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    Reviews for The X-Files Origins

    3.5/5

    26 ratings3 reviews

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    • 4/5
      Jonathan Maberry's The X-Files Origins: Devil's Advocate follows a fifteen-year-old Dana Scully in 1979 as she experiences visions of a supposed angel who is killing teenagers in her town of Craiger, Maryland. Presented as an origin story to one of television's most popular characters, Devil's Advocate raises more questions than it answers. Scully's psychic visions seem drastically out of place for the character's later outlook on life and the manner in which she adopts a skeptical approach feels rushed at the end. The most interesting part of the story focuses on the work of the Syndicate, but that plays second-fiddle to the main plot. The new age shop Beyond Beyond, which appeared in Kami Garcia's X-Files Origins novel, Agent of Chaos, plays a major role in this story with the owners/operators appearing in both. That crossover causes this to resemble Star Wars: The Phantom Menace with characters occupying the same space and time as each other in a prequel. The religious nature of the killings is interesting and matches the tone of some of the best early X-Files episodes, but overall the novel is disjointed.
    • 4/5
      The X-Files Origins: Devil's Advocate follows a pious, fifteen year old Dana Scully (my favorite female character in tv history). I was looking forward to this prequel of my favorite tv show. The book takes a peek into the personal life of Scully and her relationship with her family. The plot moved slow and then at break neck speed, very uneven.
    • 4/5
      Who is one of my very favorite TV queens? Who is one of the TV characters that I love for her inspirational strength, her smarts, her snark, and her perseverance? Who is up there in my personal hall of fame of badass ladies on the small screen?Dana. Freakin’. Scully. So the very moment that I discovered that both Mulder and Scully of “The X-Files” fame got their own origin stories, I knew that I’d save Scully for second. I wanted to savor her. I wanted to bask in her story and her background. Jonathan Maberry had a huge character to take on, and I really wanted him to do her justice. And it took me a little while, but eventually I decided that Maberry did.This story, since again we don’t get much background in the description, finds Dana as a fifteen year old adjusting to a new life in Maryland. She’s close with her sister Melissa, and trying to fit in in school, even though she knows she’s more introverted and reserved than her sister and her peers. And she’s also been having dreams, visions of violence and carnage. She’s seeing an ‘angel’ in her dreams, an angel who is killing. As teenagers in the area keep dying in accidents, Scully can’t shake the feeling that they are connected to the dreams that she doesn’t understand. What she doesn’t know is that she may be in a more dangerous situation than she realizes.So this book takes the “Scully is a psychic’ theory and totally runs with it. There have been hints at her intuitive abilities throughout the series (in “Beyond the Sea” she sees a vision of her father right before his death; “Irresistible” finds Scully kidnapped, and she sees her kidnapper’s face shifting into different iterations of evil), but it was never truly confirmed. But I liked that Maberry decided to take this theory and give it a lot of life in her background. I was kind of wondering how he would make it believable that she could have psychic visions in her youth, and then have such a skeptical foundation in the series when it starts. Without spoiling anything, I can tell you that he pulls it off, and that I really liked how he did it. And seeing Dana react and manage these very scary visions was fascinating to watch. I think that she is still very much within her character, even as a fifteen year old. She feels younger and perhaps less secure in herself, but still feels like Dana Scully, even when in a situation that is so not something you’d think she’d be in. I sort of liked the mystery that she had to solve, because it’s foundation was a good harkening to her faith, her abilities, and her ultimate road to skepticism. I had a feeling I knew what was going on from the get go, so it wasn’t terribly surprising in it’s completion. But it wasn’t about the mystery itself for me. It was about how Dana was going to solve it with her strengths and wits.I really enjoyed seeing the Scully family as well. In the series you get to know a few of her family members, specifically her sister Melissa and her mother Margaret, though you also get some solid and touching insight into Dana’s relationship with her Dad. You know that she was close to him in a lot of ways, from her reaction to his death in Season 1, to their nicknames for each other (Ahab and Starbuck!), to her seeing him in other visions as the series went on. In “Devil’s Advocate” we see how that close relationship is also a bit strained, and that Captain Scully was a bit more closed off from his family than maybe we realized. There were many moments between Dana and Captain Scully that made me misty eyed, as well as a wonderful scene with them reading from their favorite book “Moby Dick”. Whenever he called her Starbuck, I practically began to cry. I also loved seeing Dana and Melissa close and partners in crime, because their relationship on the show, while loving, was a bit contentious because they were so different. Having Melissa and Dana go to a New Age coffee shop and store for yoga and advice from local New Age practitioners just tickled me completely. Maberry also made an interesting choice of taking one of the Men in Black from the original series (the Red Haired Man), and gave him a role in a side plot. This was kind of a weaker part of this book for me, just because it took away from the main plot. In the Mulder book the surveillance parts involving X and Cigarette Smoking Man felt like a foregone conclusion; Mulder’s life had been intertwined with Cigarette Smoking Man since the beginning. Scully having this surveillance stuff in her life just felt… odd. Yes, later in life that aspect was there. I just had a harder time swallowing it in her youth.I generally liked the new characters that Maberry created to interact with Scully, be it Corinda the New Age guru (her shop also makes an appearance in the Mulder book “Agent of Chaos”), or Scully’s love interest Ethan. Like in “Agent of Chaos” I was skeptical that a love interest had to happen in this book, since we know that he’s not going to be around ultimately, but Ethan was an okay addition. He was really there to give Scully some support from someone who was more like her, which I appreciated. Her relationship with him was also a good platform to show some of the casual sexism that Dana, as a fifteen year old girl in the late 1970s, could run into, even from someone who really does care about her. Seeing her push back against that was very gratifying, and seeing Ethan try to learn from it was refreshing and a good message to modern teens who may read this. While Ethan wasn’t as strong of an original character as Phoebe was in “Agent of Chaos”, I liked having him there for Dana to bounce more down to Earth ideas off of and help her find her voice. I liked that their partnership was it’s own thing, not just a predecessor to her eventual partnership with Mulder.“The X-Files Origins: Devil’s Advocate”, showcased my girl Scully. I know that we probably won’t get anymore teen books about Scully and Mulder, just because it would feel a bit absurd to take it too far with their backgrounds, but I really enjoyed how Scully was showcased in this one. It did a good job of speculating how she became the person she was when “The X-Files” started.