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remescient's review
adventurous
dark
mysterious
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.5
It's an interesting book. I think the editor should have been a little more ruthless and cut out some of the extraneous tangents that the narrator and characters would often go on, they would get very rambley but didn't actually do much to help build the world or characters. And I felt like the ending was fairly weak. But it was still fun to read a Mass Effect novel that focused on the alien cultures that are usually ignored in the main canon. I just think this book tried to do too much at once and some better editing and tighter writing would have served it better.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Confinement, Medical content, Medical trauma, Body horror, Pandemic/Epidemic, Terminal illness, and Vomit
medea_jade's review
adventurous
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
2.0
Let down, yet again, by a BioWare tie in novel. This book was clearly written by someone who loves Mass Effect, but I think that beta readers (if there were any) were too supportive and not critical enough and editors phoned it in.
The biggest problem with the book was the pacing. It was far too slow. Not until very briefly at almost the end of the book did I feel like there was a sense of crisis, which considering the premise of the book, I should have felt from the get go.
I am all for character development, but what happened in this book felt more like character study. It was too much, too involved, for so short a book and was a huge part of what slowed the pace down. So much of what is told about the characters was irrelevant to the plot.
Something else that really bothered me was the inconsistency in character names. Sometimes they were called by their full name, sometimes only first or last, sometimes nicknames, sometimes first and middle names. It made it really hard for me to nail down which character was which. The narrator at the very least should be consistent in what the character is called. It constantly pulled me out of the story trying to figure out who was the subject at what moment.
The cast of this book is entirely alien and yet the characters frequently reference Earth plants and animals or use human phrases. This is where a beta reader would have sat up and said hmm is there another way this idea could be communicated instead of having a Batarian call another Batarian a dog.
As I said, this book was clearly written by someone who loves Mass Effect. In particular, I loved the in depth exposition about Batarians and their caste system, something I always wished the game had gone into more. But overall the book was disappointing.
The biggest problem with the book was the pacing. It was far too slow. Not until very briefly at almost the end of the book did I feel like there was a sense of crisis, which considering the premise of the book, I should have felt from the get go.
I am all for character development, but what happened in this book felt more like character study. It was too much, too involved, for so short a book and was a huge part of what slowed the pace down. So much of what is told about the characters was irrelevant to the plot.
Something else that really bothered me was the inconsistency in character names. Sometimes they were called by their full name, sometimes only first or last, sometimes nicknames, sometimes first and middle names. It made it really hard for me to nail down which character was which. The narrator at the very least should be consistent in what the character is called. It constantly pulled me out of the story trying to figure out who was the subject at what moment.
The cast of this book is entirely alien and yet the characters frequently reference Earth plants and animals or use human phrases. This is where a beta reader would have sat up and said hmm is there another way this idea could be communicated instead of having a Batarian call another Batarian a dog.
As I said, this book was clearly written by someone who loves Mass Effect. In particular, I loved the in depth exposition about Batarians and their caste system, something I always wished the game had gone into more. But overall the book was disappointing.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Vomit and Terminal illness
Minor: Child death
unviincible's review against another edition
dark
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
4.0
I had a bit of a love/hate relationship with this book but ultimately enjoyed it in the end. I'm a huge mass effect fan and there were parts of it that were strong—the dialogue especially. I went in expecting it to be an okay read but found myself enjoying and trying to unravel the mystery! I read this in 2021 while we were in an on-going pandemic, so some of the writing really struck home in that sense. it felt suitably claustrophobic and scary to be stuck on a ship with a mega-virus passing between species. I cried at one point b/c of how attached I was to yorrick!
video game books seem like a difficult thing to nail because you can't make every fan of the series happy. my main gripe was some of the worldbuilding around the aliens. maybe it's just not to my taste, but one example: the idea that only quarian women wear lavender. I think there are cleverer and less restrictive ways to signify genders than cloth colour when you have an entire suit to work with? do all quarian women have to wear lavender or is it optional? and it felt like the book was trying to say something about how not to stereotype the aliens, but then created stereotypes of certain aliens, which felt intentional to a degree but wasn't quite self-aware enough?
it's too bad we won't see the dlc around this story, but I'm glad to have read the mystery and know the answer of what happened to the quarian ark
video game books seem like a difficult thing to nail because you can't make every fan of the series happy. my main gripe was some of the worldbuilding around the aliens. maybe it's just not to my taste, but one example: the idea that only quarian women wear lavender. I think there are cleverer and less restrictive ways to signify genders than cloth colour when you have an entire suit to work with? do all quarian women have to wear lavender or is it optional? and it felt like the book was trying to say something about how not to stereotype the aliens, but then created stereotypes of certain aliens, which felt intentional to a degree but wasn't quite self-aware enough?
it's too bad we won't see the dlc around this story, but I'm glad to have read the mystery and know the answer of what happened to the quarian ark
Content Warnings
Graphic: Vomit
Minor: Child death
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