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Rating: 
Summary: Pretty bad...
Review: This collection contains a 2-part story, which seems pretty standard, and matches what we've seen from the title so far, although, which Austen writing its a bit more hollow and lacking in depth. Then we move on the 3-part crossover with Uncanny X-Men, which is possibly the worst thing Austen has done, and we're talking about a writer with a less than glowing reputation. His trademark bad dialogue is there. The plot has no suspense, its sporadically paced so that the readers doesn't know (or care) what's going on half the time. And the resolution is hardly existant...the plot just ends. Fans of the series will probably want to skip this one.
Rating: 
Summary: Chuck Austin is a big disapointment after Judd Winick
Review: This series can best be described as X-Men meets Quantum Leap meets Sliders. The previous four books in the series (all written by Judd Winick) manage to be funny, fun, clever, surprising, and occasionally poignant. The scenarios were interesting, and the characters had real depth and development over the course of the books. In this book, Chuck Austin basically makes the characters two-dimensional and sticks them in pointless situations. In the first story the Exiles are instructed to essentially allow the genocide of an entire race of people. On the surface, that's an interesting idea to explore. From Winick's previous books we've seen that sometimes fixing a reality requires doing something which on the surface looks horrible-but in this book the story just ends abruptly. We have no idea what the outcome was, or why the characters were supposed to do that. On top of that none of the characters act like themselves, and there are no repercussions for their actions (at least not in this book). The second story is even worse. Austin has the Exiles pop into the "real" Marvel Universe, basically right into the middle of a plot he was doing in Uncanny X-Men. The Exiles act even less like themselves, and the plot they're involved with is just stupid (and the "real" X-Men don't act like themselves either). On top of that, for no apparent reason Austin tries to claim all the events in the Exiles series actually revolve around a character from Uncanny X-Men. The only redeeming quality this book has is the possibility that in the sixth book Judd Winick might do something clever with the mess made here. Again, the previous four books are excellent. Very, very fun if the idea of combining the X-Men with Sliders or Quantum Leap appeals to you. It's just this fifth book that's a big let down.
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