Mass Effect Revelation is a strange little book. It feels oddly out of place with the rest of the mass effect franchise despite being (in a way) the first chunk of said franchise.
The book is supposed to tie-in to the original game and came out several months before the original computer game was released.
and it feels like an all-out fanfiction of the original Mass Effect game. But I don't really want to hold it against it for that, given it exists with nothing else around it.
However what I can hold against this book its generic title.
Revelation!
That is one of the most generic names you can give to a book, movie or just about anything else.
If the average person looks down at a science fiction section they're not going to think twice about wanting to pick this thing up.
It blends into the crowd and becomes one more paperweight amongst the pile of books that no one want to read.
It's only saving grace is that it has the name Mass Effect on it and a familiar alien that's important to people who have actually played the game.
Speaking of the alien on the cover. Most of this book is supposed to be a Prelude and examination of the antagonist alien character Saren. And he's acquiring of the Reaper ship that he possesses in the original game.
But it doesn't really explain any of that.
It shows how he came to acknowledge the existence of this big ship and it shows a bunch of other people who were researching the (than) unnamed Reaper race that became so prominent with in Mass Effect.
But otherwise we're left with fairly small amounts of information in this book. Saren is for all intensive purposes the most interesting character throughout the whole story. He's the only one that feels like he has any drive to him and you don't even know why he cares about anything to begin with.
He's just a super-powered space Sheriff who has the legal capabilities to do anything he wants so he goes after this weird investigative case just to see if he can screw the humans over. As his race of aliens has a bit of a grievance with Humanity.
But for the most part, a lot of the story revolves around the character 'Anderson' (who's a complete loser in this book) and this random woman who only becomes prominent in the video games within the Third instalment.
They're supposed to be this whole deviant story about illegal technology research and Secret operations between different human organizations and the strange illegal Alian criminal. But it all muddles together in the end and you find yourself kind of disinterested in these supposedly good characters.
As I said previously Anderson is a dork in this book and spent a fair amount of the time ogling this girl who he's supposed to be protecting all because of insecurities over he's divorced wife from over 7 years ago.
Like dude get over it.
you're supposed to be protecting this girl while simultaneously getting information from her about the strange terrorist attack on a research facility she was working in and seeing just how much connections he has do it all. Ramos the book you're not even sure if she's innocent. After that I say go find a hooker or something.
It's the Mass Effect Universe, it's not even illegal.
Speaking of exotic aliens, we don't really get a lot to do with any of them in this story.
We get Saren from earlier who serves as the kind of antagonist of the whole book and we get this big Krogan guy. Called Scar who is supposed to be really tough and intimidating. But loses most battles he's involved in. Kind of reminds me of Worf from Star Trek but with none of the fun character development or silly characteristics.
We spend so much of our time with boring humans. And I get it. We have to get introduced to the world and we can't just throw ourselves in with the more exciting alien races yet.
There's a chunk in the middle of this book where Anderson in this other girl are sitting it up random house in the middle of nowhere on an alien planet in the whole thing reads like we're in the middle of Kansas.
It's a very safe and conventional read. You can guess most the plot points coming a mile away all the characters are extremely simplistic and it's another one of those if it didn't have a famous name attached to it properties nobody would give it a time of day.
In a way I almost wish this book was done like a textbook. Just a general history of humanity and all the other alien races from their humble beginnings all the way to the modern day.
Which admittedly makes more like an encyclopedia. But I think it would make for a better read.
The Prelude to this book is the best part. Just explaining Humanities spread throughout the solar system, discovery of the Prothean technology and inevitable contact with the other aliens. After that the whole thing kind of just mellows out.
The closest we get to any of this energy again is when the human Ambassador has to try and pull humanity's butt out of the fire after the council races discover a bunch of people were trying to work on artificial intelligence.
We got a little bit of back story about the Gith and a very smug Ambassador who's not that good diplomacy some how is able to pull the wool over the council aliens eyes.
I guess from the games perspective none of these people are all that smart and that's one of the big themes about Mass Effect. Bureaucracy and bad politics making for lackluster decisions in the face of utter destruction.
Come to think of it; you could make it this whole thing into a metaphor about climate change. I don't think it is, but the options there.
Comments
Post a Comment