There were so many things wrong with this book. My review will be equally messy because I'm still mad and I can't get this down in an orderly manner but I'm not a writer so I'm excused. 
 To the author: This is my longest negative review ever. You emotionally instigated me. That counts for something. I loved The Troop and plan to read whatever you write next. With that said, here comes the pain! (in no particular order) 
 As far as the comparisons to The Thing, Alien, and The Abyss, I would say this successfully rips off all three without adding anything new to the spirit of those films. 
 The Good: 
 Ania Ahlborn blurbing on the cover alongside Stephen King, Scott Smith, and other Names. I've enjoyed watching her skyrocket to the top since she wrote Seed just a few years ago. You go girl. 
 The Rest: 
 I didn't care about any of the characters. By the halfway point I wanted them all to die. 
 --The flashback scenes, roughly half of the content, were by and large completely unnecessary. They were also incredibly boring and had so little to do with the plot is was like reading two entirely different tales in tandem for no particular reason other than page-count-stuffing until the author tried to conveniently make sense of it all at the last minute and failed. 
 --The Dr. Toy predicament. Ah, Dr. Toy. This is where all hopes of suspension of disbelief went right down the ol' shitter for me. The following is something that could be in a book trailer if there was one but I'll mark it as a spoiler just in case so nobody freaks out on me. Seriously though, I think you can check it without losing anything from the reading experience: 
 (view spoiler)[The first thing they see through a porthole in the egg station is a crazy guy with a scalpel making threatening gestures before he turns away and runs off to God knows where. Nick is a doctor so he should be a smart guy. Al has military training; certainly some pragmatism has to come with that. So what is the first thing they do after gaining entry? They chat with his brother about "how's the research going?" 
 I hope most people would agree with me that the first order of business should be to TRACK DOWN THE CRAZY DUDE WITH THE SCALPEL RUNNING RAMPANT IN THE UNDERWATER DEATH STAR EGG. But that can always wait. Hopefully he's not back there swinging a pick-axe at a porthole or anything but I haven't seen my brother in ages and we're gonna shoot the shit for a while first. What's the worst that can happen? (hide spoiler)] 
 This drove me nuts. I just couldn't let it go for the remaining ~60% of the novel. If anyone thinks that neutralizing the guy with the knife is a secondary priority, feel free to comment below. 
 --If this were written as wisdom literature, we would all be doomed. At one point someone allegedly intelligent says something in an if/then context concerning "if Satan could do A then God could do B." There are so many 'ifs' in that equation that the question itself is not even worth asking. It defies logic and I have to label it as The Laziest Philosophical Question Ever Asked Since the Dawn of Mankind. 
 --There were other wisdom nuggets to be found and I won't go into them all but a personal favorite was "The smartest people were too often the stupidest." That's right; Stick that in your fortune cookie! 
 -Writers should no longer be allowed to say that someone "was shaking and it had nothing to do with the cold." Enough said. 
 --Getting back to suspension of disbelief, I enjoyed the following quotes from the book. Yeah, I highlight a lot. 
 "It seems crazy but-" 
 "None of this makes any sense." 
 "This is not really happening." 
 "The worst mistake you can make is to think it's idiotic." (I love that one) 
 "That may be the stupidest thing you've ever said." 
 "Stop questioning any of it." 
 "These things happen every day." (Ha!) 
 I'll stop there with the ironic quotes. 
 --For character building a mad scientist, see Stephen King's revival. He handles it masterfully. The guy in this book was more like a cartoon of a mad scientist. The immaturity inherent to every interaction he had with his brother was embarrassing and another one of the things I had trouble believing. I'm trying to picture someone like Einstein or even a high school graduate behaving that way and I'm drawing a blank. In short, the dialogue was dumb. 
 --John Carpenter's The Thing is sacred ground. (view spoiler)[ The scene with the disembodied hand that had an arachnid-like appearance was straight out of the movie. Not a tribute. Just a repeat. I was more offended than disappointed. (hide spoiler)] 
 This did have some genuine moments of horror that were well written, gross, and enjoyable so I'm bumping this one up to 1.5 stars. 
 /end rant