X-Files Season 10 Volume 1

This was so much better than I thought it would be! David Duchovny, Gillian Anderson and a ton of other original cast members are back as their characters in a fully-voiced and stunningly produced audiobook that feels just like you're watching episodes of the show.

The audiobook consists of five chapters that are essentially 5 all new X-Files episodes that take place between seasons 9 and 10 of the series. I'm going to quickly break each one down and give you a few thoughts on each as some were better than others.

Chapter 1 - Believers: So great having the whole ensemble back and it even had a few surprise appearances from X-Files side characters. This acted as a mythology episode and pretty perfectly made sense of all the twisted alien mythology the show had it its later seasons, making me wish that we'd seen something like this chapter in the actual show. Only downside was that the action sequence at the end was quite hard to follow in audio form, and could have done with a bit more narration from the characters on what was actually happening.

Chapter 2 - Hosts: Easily my favourite of the bunch, even if the ending was anticlimactic. As it's name suggests, this chapter finally gave us the long awaited return of the Flukeman and upped-the-ante just like Alien did with its sequel Aliens, giving us a ton more Flukemen. Some really cool scenes in this chapter, and really fleshed-out the Flukeman backstory.

Chapter 3 - Being for the Benefit of Mr. X: I found this one to be the worst of the lot. It was very hard to follow in audio form, very short compared to the others, and the whole chapter pretty much solely consisted of a single conversation and flashback. Mr. X was back though so even though this chapter was quite lacklustre, he was still as badass as ever.

Chapter 4 - More Musings of a Cigarette Smoking Man: This chapter was probably my second favourite after Hosts. It works as a sequel to the Season 4 episode ‘Musings of a Cigarette Smoking Man' and follows the same format as that episode did by pretty much only focussing on Cancer Man himself and taking us through different stories from his past for the runtime. Absolutely loved every single one of the stories and how they all connected to different moments in the show. The highlight of this chapter though was easily William B. Davis's voice acting. So good!

Chapter 5 - Pilgrims: This chapter was epic. Clocking in around an hour and a half long it had everything you'd ever want in a mythology episode and totally felt that it was movie-scale in execution. Even though this chapter was long, it went by in a breeze and the story was super engaging. And come on, our favourite rogue agent Krychek coming back? What's not to love about that.

All in all, I was blown away with the quality of the audiobook and honestly think that the stories and route that they took with this should've been what they went with for season 10 of the show, so much more engaging and a better storyline all around.

Would definitely consider this essential listening for any X-Files fan.