Hey, Readers! How’s life treating you, lately?
We’re drawing ever closer to the Holiday Season and so our minds tend to turn towards the giving and receiving of gifts. In this spirit, I decided to Spotlight something that sits firmly in my two favorite categories of gift: Books and video games.
(Plus, I picked this title up on November 7th. Happy belated N7 day!)
Mass Effect’s story, for those of you who may be unfamiliar, is set in a near-future where humanity has become a part of the greater galactic community in the Milky Way. Huge machines called Mass Effect relays allow ships to travel between inhabited systems at vastly faster than light speeds. We interact with the all-female Asari, the militaristic and hierarchical Turians, the rough and ready warrior race, the Krogans and many others besides. It’s like all my favorite parts of both Star Trek and Star Wars smooshed together into their own thing. Its own amazing, wonderful thing. You can tell that this universe was crafted with some serious love.
Mass Effect is one of those pivotal video game experiences. The re-release of the first three titles (Dubbed the Legendary Edition) happened a little over a year ago and was a welcome addition to my PS4 library. I already own them for PS3, but since when has that ever stopped me from buying an updated version of any game? (Just ask my 3 copies of Skyrim. Yes, Todd Howard, you keep making ’em, I’ll keep buying ’em. Sigh.) But the most recent Mass Effect release prior to this remaster… well. It wasn’t so well received.
Mass Effect Andromeda was contentious from the get-go. Massive day one patch, game-breaking bugs and creepy facial animations set the stage poorly for what was, in my opinion, an interesting story in the Mass Effect universe. There are great characters, new and interesting species and amazing environments to explore in the Andromeda Galaxy and it’s a real shame that a lot of this was overshadowed by the flaws present in the game. And keep in mind that this is nothing against the massive group of talent that worked on the game. I know that it was a challenging environment to work in and development was troubled. I appreciate every minute of time spent on developing this title and hope that we get a return to the series that’s created under calmer, fairer circumstances.
Also: Andromeda had Vetra. My favorite romance option across all of the Mass Effect titles. 7 foot tall metallic alien ant who can smuggle and trade like an absolute boss!? What’s not to love?
Anyway. All this to say that the books based on this section of Mass Effect immediately interested me – story without the shadow cast by the various graphical and gameplay problems presented in the game? Wonderful!
So, grab yourself a cup of Ryncol (Just kidding. That stuff will shred your gastrointestinal tract! Unless you’re Krogan.) and let’s check out this adventure, 600 years and tens of thousands of lives in the making.
Book Stats
- Author: Jason M. Hough & K. C. Alexander
Formats: Paperback, Kindle, Audible and Audio CD!
Price: $7.19 for paperback, $7.99 for Kindle, $14.95 for Audible (Or 1 Credit.) and $14.97 for the CD version.
Length: 336 pages or 13 hours 24 minutes in audio formats.
Narrator: Fryda Wolff.
Number of books in the series: 3 in the Andromeda series, but there are a lot of Mass Effect books in general.
Basic Premise
Sloane Kelly wakes from her 600 years of chryo stasis to an absolute, unmitigated disaster. And it’s not just the hangover her body hasn’t been allowed to process yet. The entire space station, flung from the Milky Way to our nearest galactic neighbor, seems to be coming apart at the seams. She wasn’t woken correctly, instead, her pod just failed meaning she’s groggy and disoriented and doesn’t even immediately know how to free herself.
It all started so promisingly, too. A brand new future in a new galaxy, apparently filled with garden worlds just ripe for colonization. Humans, Turians, Asari, Salarian, Krogan and many more species all working together to create a new life for themselves free of the prejudices and history that plagued the Milky Way. Old grudges left behind, all hatchets buried in fresh, new soil.
Idealistic? Yes. Realistic? Probably not. Especially now that they’ve arrived. The Andromeda galaxy isn’t all sunshine and roses after all – a lot can happen in 600 years. Tendrils of strange energy have wrapped themselves throughout the stars of Andromeda. It’s impossible to pick up on sensors and it shreds anything that makes contact. Metal, flesh, it doesn’t matter. It’s all disintegrated. The Nexus, the space station that was to be at the heart of the Andromeda colonization effort, has run into some of this stuff and it’s killed many, wounded more and made large sections of the station uninhabitable. Staff who would have been setting up critical systems have to be woken up…. but as life support is barely functional, figuring out who can and can’t be revived becomes a game of strategy.
What’s even worse is that most of the leadership of the Andromeda Intuitive is dead, leaving 8th in the line of succession to take the reins. Tann is a Salarian with a mind for numbers… but not so much a mind for people. Can his cool and calculating mind make for an effective leader? (The answer may surprise you.)
Hydroponics was supposed to have self-started early so that colonists would wake up to pre-grown crops but radiation has killed a lot of the seeds and getting the surviving ones germinating is a struggle. Food eventually will have to be rationed. Resources are sparse which leads to the breaking of the rules… poor Sloane, as chief of security, will have to deal with this, but how?
And then there’s Spender. He’s a facilitator. A negotiator. A consummate politician. That can’t mean anything good. He quickly figures out the power dynamics of this shredded and tired space station, but does he use his powers for good or for his own personal gain?
In short, can this woefully unprepared and generally miserable group of would-be colonists get themselves together well enough to make a go of it out here in a new galaxy?
Read it to find out!
My Take
As stated in the preamble, I love the world of Mass Effect. I love the characters, the races, the tech and the feel of the universe. And the idea of getting to experience all that in a pure, story-driven form was immediately very interesting to me. Before finding this gem I actually didn’t even know that there were Mass Effect: Andromeda books out there.
This is a prequel to the game and as such, some of the mystery was lost for me because… well. I’ve met these characters before. I know how it plays out. The politics of the Nexus and the various factions from it is something that’s mentioned in the game, but this is a much more detailed summary of how we get from A to B.
Having said that, the journey IS the important part, here. Sure, we know the endpoint already, but these are fun, interesting characters in a richly detailed world. And most of the people in this book are, in terms of the game, side characters. This book doesn’t have Vetra or Liam or PeeBee in it, for example. It does have Drack, but only briefly. While the game Andromeda is specifically a Ryder’s eye view of the galaxy of Andromeda, this story helps flesh a lot of the extra stuff out.
The narrator, Fryda Wolff, does an excellent job. She switches between English and American accents smoothly and seamlessly, roughens up when voicing Krogans and her clipped, cool portrayal of Tann especially made me smile. And you’d expect her to do a fantastic job with this – she voices Sara Ryder in the game! Her voice acting credits are pretty extensive. If you’re a fan of her work, I highly recommend this title.
In short, a great tale set in a fantastic universe. Highly recommended.
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