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A review by tikimoof
Annihilation by Catherynne M. Valente
4.0
I don't think I've read a tie-in novel since those Halo: Reach books back in early high school.
I never finished Andromeda due to boredom and bugs, so the fact that this was set pre-Andromeda worked pretty well for me. I really only needed the beginning premise of the game to explain the setting of the book. But this also meant the book was untethered from the story problems of Andromeda, which was all for the best. And you could see something of a player character in Anax, one who presented different parts of herself to different people. And I loved Yorrik.
I thought this being a closed-room mystery setting was a really cool take. It worked great for the setting (all of the forgotten alien species crammed together, all with at least slightly different agendas). I feel Valente is a very visceral and kind of gory author, so some of the deaths were too much for me (those were parts that I couldn’t see happening in a DLC the way Bioware presents things).
So I think my first nitpick has to do with the nature of the beast: the beginning is really plodding as Valente establishes the universe for those who haven't played the games. For those who have sunk hundreds of hours in to the series (drell assassin in ME3 multiplayer was stupidly fun to play, what can I say), that part can get pretty boring. The later middle of the book seemed slow to me too, after the mystery had been established and we started to look for solutions. I don’t buy all of the explanation of the mystery at the end, but I’ll try to remember what little I knew about epidemiology and see if it settles.
And then my least favorite part had to do with Senna and Liat. It might have been getting a dumbed-down description of genetic algorithms, the whole thing may have suddenly turned into more of a tell-not-show, or it may have just been that I never particularly cared for quarians - especially after the resolution of Mass Effect 3. But I was never interested in wondering about Liat. Mostly I was just bored there.
I also adored the Pirates of Penzance reference, it was a great call back to the trilogy.
Overall, I'm still glad I gave Valente another try, I liked this much better than Six-Gun Snow White on the whole.
If you’re only interested in the council races from the Mass Effect series, don’t expect to see any of those. I don’t know that this would be very interesting to somebody not already invested in Mass Effect at all (Valente does make sure to give broad strokes of motivations, but I don’t know how much else of the universe is required to really care), but it’s well-written at the least. I’ve definitely read worse.
3.5 ish, I really hated the plodding.
I never finished Andromeda due to boredom and bugs, so the fact that this was set pre-Andromeda worked pretty well for me. I really only needed the beginning premise of the game to explain the setting of the book. But this also meant the book was untethered from the story problems of Andromeda, which was all for the best. And you could see something of a player character in Anax, one who presented different parts of herself to different people. And I loved Yorrik.
I thought this being a closed-room mystery setting was a really cool take. It worked great for the setting (all of the forgotten alien species crammed together, all with at least slightly different agendas). I feel Valente is a very visceral and kind of gory author, so some of the deaths were too much for me (those were parts that I couldn’t see happening in a DLC the way Bioware presents things).
So I think my first nitpick has to do with the nature of the beast: the beginning is really plodding as Valente establishes the universe for those who haven't played the games. For those who have sunk hundreds of hours in to the series (drell assassin in ME3 multiplayer was stupidly fun to play, what can I say), that part can get pretty boring. The later middle of the book seemed slow to me too, after the mystery had been established and we started to look for solutions. I don’t buy all of the explanation of the mystery at the end, but I’ll try to remember what little I knew about epidemiology and see if it settles.
And then my least favorite part had to do with Senna and Liat. It might have been getting a dumbed-down description of genetic algorithms, the whole thing may have suddenly turned into more of a tell-not-show, or it may have just been that I never particularly cared for quarians - especially after the resolution of Mass Effect 3. But I was never interested in wondering about Liat. Mostly I was just bored there.
I also adored the Pirates of Penzance reference, it was a great call back to the trilogy.
Overall, I'm still glad I gave Valente another try, I liked this much better than Six-Gun Snow White on the whole.
If you’re only interested in the council races from the Mass Effect series, don’t expect to see any of those. I don’t know that this would be very interesting to somebody not already invested in Mass Effect at all (Valente does make sure to give broad strokes of motivations, but I don’t know how much else of the universe is required to really care), but it’s well-written at the least. I’ve definitely read worse.
3.5 ish, I really hated the plodding.