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A review by unviincible
Annihilation by Catherynne M. Valente
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