This is a tie-in with the 1992 comic book miniseries "Aliens: Hive." However, there is no mention of "Aliens" anywhere in it, and only a passing reference to the disappearance of Mayakovsky. It was advertised as a "companion book," but it is better by FAR than "Hive" (which I liked), and it stands perfectly well on its own.

This is a complicated book, despite its deceptively small size. It piles on contexts so high it may be hard for some to know what exactly they're looking at.

The core of the book is the story of Ari, a robotic ant. She was created by the eccentric Dr. Stanislaw Mayakovsky to study the behavior of ants, from their perspective. She is shaped like an ant and is equipped with all the chemical signaling equipment of an ant, plus a few extra pieces of hardware. She is sent into an ant colony and has "a little adventure," interacting with the ants and their neighbors, exploring the colony, and fending off invaders. It is beautifully illustrated by Geary. This section alone would make it an excellent children's book.

On another level, there's the footnotes. There are notes about ant biology and signaling. There are also notes which add another layer of fictional context to the book, detailing the "author," Stanislaw Mayakovsky, his life, career, and his reasons for writing the book. Sticking his name on the cover just helps sell this part of the story.

This book is like the fictional equivalent of a nesting doll. It's one of my all-time favorites. ( )