Category: Book

Mass Effect — The Book

After enjoy­ing the Res­i­dent Evil book series, I was real­ly excit­ed to try read­ing Mass Effect. Upon shop­ping, I noticed that reviews were not so stel­lar. That does­n’t nec­es­sar­i­ly both­er me as I pre­fer com­ing to my own opin­ions, so I bought them any­ways — Androm­e­da includ­ed. Here, I explore my impres­sions about the first book in the series.

Rec­om­mend­ed: NO

Rat­ing: 2 out of 5

Mass Effect — Revelation (2007)

Pre­quel to the Mass Effect games, writ­ten by Drew Karpyshyn

323 pages

Sum­ma­ry

This book is a pre­quel to the events set with­in the game series. It cov­ers Cap­tain David Ander­son from his N7 train­ing to his Lieu­tenant rank, and also includes Saren the Spec­tre. The pro­logue explains how Rear Admi­ral Gris­som, Hero of Earth, chose Ander­son specif­i­cal­ly out of all the can­di­dates of the N7 pro­gram to help lead troops dur­ing the First Con­tact War with the Turi­ans. Then fast-for­ward to a mis­sion where Lt. Ander­son and his patrol team inves­ti­gate a may­day sig­nal. He is paint­ed a capa­ble leader and hero before return­ing to the Citadel. He bit­ter­ly deals with divorce from his wife back on Earth and is then giv­en his next mission–one that’s on the down-low. He’s to go after Kahlee Sanders, the child of Admi­ral Gris­som (now retired and grumpy) who is in trou­ble as the lone sur­vivor after a ques­tion­able lab was destroyed (the one Ander­son respond­ed to). They must con­tend with Skarr the mer­ce­nary Kro­gan, the Blue Suns mer­ce­nary group, and Saren the Turi­an Spec­tre. The secrets of the destroyed lab are uncov­ered, paint­ing humans in a bad light. Human Ambas­sador Goyle must play the Coun­cil (or be played?) to help defend the human race and for­ward their agen­da. Along the way, Ander­son grows feel­ings for his ward, and then feels betrayed when she does­n’t ful­ly trust him. Even­tu­al­ly, Sanders gets cap­tured by the Blue Suns’ rich Batar­i­an employ­er. Although Saren must help Ander­son by order of the Coun­cil, he and Ander­son split up any­ways. Saren blows up the ele­ment zero facil­i­ty to com­plete his mis­sion, but not before learn­ing about Sov­er­eign and want­i­ng it for him­self, while Ander­son strug­gles to kill Skarr and save Sanders. The book ends with Ander­son upset that Sanders does not wish to get into a roman­tic rela­tion­ship with him, and she leaves.

Pros — The sto­ry helps to uncov­er more about Ander­son who isn’t touched upon too much in the game. It brings togeth­er some his­to­ry that can become con­fus­ing­ly lost in the lore-rich games. Human­i­ty is quite new to every­thing, so this high­lights some of the thoughts and strug­gles of humans as they attempt to inte­grate and gain respect from the oth­er aliens. Uneth­i­cal and tor­ture-lov­ing Saren is very well described, and his role segues neat­ly into the first Mass Effect game where he had already found Sov­er­eign and was being slow­ly indoc­tri­nat­ed. Most of the alien species were explored in this book, even the Batar­i­ans who don’t get a lot of love in the game.

Cons - The author spends an inor­di­nate amount of time describ­ing — so much so, that I skipped through most of it. His por­tray­al of females in the book is not par­tic­u­lar­ly favor­able, paint­ing most, if not all, the females as inept in some fash­ion or form. Even though Ander­son is the main focus of the book, I found him to be an absolute idiot much of the time. In fact, of all the char­ac­ters, Saren and Skarr are prob­a­bly the only ones who weren’t irri­tat­ing. Apart from Saren’s tor­ture scenes, the book felt quite bor­ing as a whole. The bare bones of the book flows, but the nar­ra­tive (espe­cial­ly towards the end) bor­ders on illog­i­cal or unnec­es­sary.

Impres­sions

As men­tioned pri­or, I was real­ly excit­ed to read this. As a pre­quel, and there­fore an orig­i­nal work, it had the poten­tial to be great, as it would not be con­fined to the sto­ry­line of the game. Sad­ly, I do NOT rec­om­mend this book even if you’re a fan of the Mass Effect series. The pro­logue start­ed out poor­ly for me, where after the first few para­graphs I already had to reread the words a few times out of bore­dom. As a whole, I end­ed up read­ing prob­a­bly half of the book, skip­ping much of it for lack of inter­est. While it did a good job of even­tu­al­ly tying into the first Mass Effect game, I just want­ed the book to be done and over. None of the char­ac­ters res­onat­ed with me aside from Saren and Skarr because every­one else was an idiot. The book left a sour taste in my mouth that made me not want to read the rest of the series, pre­fer­ring to just play the real Mass Effect game.

As a spoil­er, Kahlee Sanders appears to be one of the main char­ac­ters in the sec­ond book which is set right after Saren and Sov­er­eign attack the Citadel. UGH. I read as far as see­ing her there, and imme­di­ate­ly quit read­ing. If I felt her to be unlike­able in the first book, then I doubt I’ll like her in the sec­ond one. Per­haps I will return to the series in the future when I have noth­ing else to read.

Gripes

Descrip­tion: My first prob­lem with this was in the pro­logue where the author describes the ship car­ry­ing Admi­ral Gris­som. The worst case was of the Pre­sid­i­um. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, this would be a recur­ring prob­lem: entire­ly too much descrip­tion and not enough action. I found myself skip­ping large sec­tions of text just to get to next part, it felt so exces­sive. And bor­ing. I get that the book was writ­ten in such a way that if peo­ple were to read it with­out play­ing the game, then they could under­stand, but I felt it to be too much. I wish the author had spent as much time nar­rat­ing the action scenes as describ­ing places.

Intro­spec­tion: Gen­er­al­ly, I enjoy get­ting into the minds of char­ac­ters, espe­cial­ly after play­ing the game, but I did not enjoy the intro­spec­tion in this book. There was just not much going on their heads and the things they did think about were incon­se­quen­tial to char­ac­ter build­ing. The only thought process­es I found myself inter­est­ed in were from Saren, who, by the way, was well written…perhaps because of all the char­ac­ters in this book, he was the only one with a ded­i­cat­ed per­son­al­i­ty in the game…hmm. Lack of cre­ativ­i­ty on the author’s part?

Char­ac­ters: The char­ac­ters are not enjoy­able. They did not res­onate with me. Most of them were por­trayed as morons or were irri­tat­ing. I found myself not car­ing about the two main char­ac­ters, Ander­son and Sanders, though I want­ed to care about Ander­son because I liked him a lot in the game. He’d get upset over tiny insignif­i­cant things that a sol­dier as expe­ri­enced and sup­pos­ed­ly fan­tas­tic as a leader as he was should­n’t have got­ten in a tizzy about. Even Goyle, whom I ini­tial­ly liked as com­pared to Udi­na in the game, even­tu­al­ly grew…unhinged? I’m not sure what the author was try­ing to do to her.

Females: That brings me to the next gripe: the por­tray­al of women. Is it because the author is male? I’m not sure, but all the main females were obnox­ious in some fash­ion or form. Goyle as men­tioned above, start­ed out as a strong leader, but then her sub­se­quent intro­spec­tion paint­ed her…as not (per­haps the exces­sive explo­ration into her mind did her in here)? The book starts out with Ander­son lead­ing his small group respond­ing to a dis­tress call. In the group is one woman, Gun­nery Chief Dah, who is described as larg­er than most of the males, mus­cu­lar, and basi­cal­ly an uncouth brute with a mouth, yet supreme­ly skill­ful. Any­ways, she ends up get­ting shot in the leg, and instead of get­ting up to try and limp out of the col­laps­ing facil­i­ty like the tough marine she was sup­posed to be, she just lay there, and Ander­son had to car­ry her huge frame on his back. Even­tu­al­ly, she passed out alto­geth­er and all the males had to car­ry her. So much for tough sol­dier. Then there’s Ander­son­’s ex-wife on Earth who divorced him because he nev­er came home for many, many years. He’s bit­ter about the divorce for the entire­ty book, and I sim­ply can­not com­mis­er­ate with him. She’s por­trayed as a bad per­son for the divorce when she’d been wait­ing for him for about a decade, trapped inside of a rela­tion­ship with entire galax­ies in between and no accu­rate time­line of his return. Talk about a long-dis­tance rela­tion­ship! At least she end­ed it offi­cial­ly before try­ing to move on with the rest of her life. Then there’s the female Batar­i­an that betrays her facil­i­ty and then gets killed mer­ci­less­ly by Saren.

Ander­son: For the sup­posed main pro­tag­o­nist, he is not a like­able guy, and eas­i­ly offend­ed. He was good in the begin­ning dur­ing the N7 pro­logue, and clear­ly an excep­tion­al sol­dier in his lead­ing of the botched dis­tress call response. The whole divorce thing? Dumb, as stat­ed above. He’s a jerk, espe­cial­ly when deal­ing with the Salari­an infor­ma­tion deal­er. Yeah, he has high ideals, so what? Instead of being grate­ful for the black-mar­ket infor­ma­tion, he berates her about hav­ing access to top secret infor­ma­tion. He does that again lat­er in the book, too. Dude. They have info. Who cares if they hacked in. They’re hack­ers. He’s extreme­ly emo­tion­al, and not over­ly smart…something that his N7 badge and gold­en ser­vice records are in direct oppo­si­tion to. Hard­ened sol­dier: emo­tion­al? When he’s deal­ing with Saren who is a noto­ri­ous and accom­plished Spec­tre, he tries to fist fight him. Then he devel­ops this stu­pid idea of feel­ings for Kahlee Sanders, his ward. OKAY, maybe there’s some slack to be cut because he was recent­ly divorced…or maybe not because it’s not like he ever saw his wife any­ways? If he’s as ded­i­cat­ed to his career as a sol­dier as he’s claimed to be, he would be see­ing her as a mis­sion objec­tive, not a poten­tial part­ner. The end­ing is the worst. Ander­son and Sanders exchange some words before he tries to kiss her and she stops him, explain­ing that their lives are about to be split apart again with their next mis­sions. It’s rea­son­able to not start some­thing as they would hard­ly ever see each oth­er. He gets real­ly upset, like mad, as if his last rela­tion­ship had­n’t just failed for the same rea­son. Per­haps he thinks he deserves a reward for pro­tect­ing and sav­ing her? That’s what it felt like to me, at least. Also, it’s nev­er clear exact­ly how old he is. She’s clear­ly young.

Sanders: Then that brings me to my biggest gripe of all: Kahlee Sanders, the lone sur­viv­ing sci­en­tist from the mys­te­ri­ous lab that explod­ed. In Mass Effect, any­one who is in space for the Alliance will be trained as a sol­dier. The book iter­ates over and over that she’s intel­li­gent — more intel­li­gent than your aver­age sci­en­tist. It also paints her ear­ly on as an extreme­ly capa­ble sol­dier when she defends her­self with bru­tal effi­cien­cy against a Blue Suns mer­ce­nary who tries to abduct her in Ely­si­um. She is Jon Gris­som’s daugh­ter after all! Well. Once Ander­son shows up, she’s sud­den­ly an annoy­ing damsel in dis­tress. What hap­pened to that capa­ble sol­dier? Even­tu­al­ly, she gets cap­tured where she is fear­ful of the tor­ture meth­ods they’re plan­ning on sub­ject­ing her to even though no one said any­thing about it (that is just bad sto­ry­telling, hon­est­ly). In the con­fine­ment, she con­sid­ered bash­ing her head repeat­ed­ly against the wall (what???) and then decides against it. When the door is loose, she man­ages to dis­lo­cate her shoul­der knock­ing it off (real­ly…?) which forces her sav­ior, Ander­son, to pop it back into place. Then, as they run from the quick­ly dis­in­te­grat­ing, explod­ing ele­ment zero fac­to­ry, she sud­den­ly, out of the blue falls to the ground, and is sim­ply so dis­tressed about every­thing (dur­ing an actu­al, life threat­en­ing, cri­sis sit­u­a­tion, mind you), that she refus­es to get up and move because she’s not a sol­dier, she’s just a sci­en­tist! She’s weak! Then Ander­son says, “…get up off your ass and get your feet mov­ing! That’s an order!” The text then goes, “Like a good sol­dier, she respond­ed to his com­mands.” So…wait…she’s a sol­dier now, not just a sci­en­tist? What exact­ly is she? A bur­den. Her only sav­ing grace is that she’s able to block Ander­son­’s moves at the end with a rea­son­able bit of log­ic.

In Con­clu­sion

It appears the book reviews are spot on. I’d rate it 2 stars out of 5. There were good parts, but most­ly I did not enjoy it. When you’re skip­ping half of the text in an effort to just fin­ish the darn thing, it’s not a good sign. Try­ing to read the sec­ond book and find­ing that it also has noth­ing to do with Com­man­der Shep­ard was also extreme­ly dis­ap­point­ing. I guess I was hop­ing it would be like Res­i­dent Evil where I get to vis­it the same sto­ry but in book form. There’s artis­tic license avail­able to an author (with agree­ment from the pub­lish­er, of course) that would allow them to explore what would be “canon” in a game or not. I want­ed a sto­ry about Shep­ard’s adven­ture. He/she would not have to involve them­selves in any rela­tion­ships what­so­ev­er apart from cama­raderie and occa­sion­al, non-seri­ous flings. Shep­ard is a sol­dier after all, with a mis­sion. I get that there could be fall­out from fans, but man­ga and ani­me reg­u­lar­ly con­flict, and that’s because you under­stand that one is a book and the oth­er is not. As a pre­quel, though, this sto­ry would have been fine because it’s an orig­i­nal piece. What a let­down.

Resident Evil — The Books

I start­ed read­ing the first of the Res­i­dent Evil books by S.D. Per­ry based on the game and copy­right­ed by Cap­com, and despite try­ing to pro­long the read­ing, was too engrossed about halfway through so end­ed up fin­ish­ing it yes­ter­day. It’s inter­est­ing to see how it devi­ates and expands upon the game itself, so I’d like to not only offer my review, but also note the dif­fer­ences from the game itself. I will read all 7 books and go over them here. I am also oper­at­ing off the assump­tion that those who are read­ing these books have played these games and so I will not warn of spoil­ers for the game-relat­ed ones, but I will for ones with no rela­tion to the game.

In short: I def­i­nite­ly rec­om­mend these books to those who enjoyed the orig­i­nal games. They tie every­thing togeth­er and give not only a writ­ten replay of the sto­ry, but an inter­est­ing glimpse into the minds of these char­ac­ters. I found them to be well writ­ten and not over­ly annoy­ing.

Resident Evil — The Umbrella Conspiracy (Sept 2012)

Res­i­dent Evil (Chris, Jill, Bar­ry, Wesker)

271 pages

Impres­sions

Pros — This the first book in the series and based on the first game in the series. My most favorite part–and the rea­son I decid­ed to read these books–is that books allow many times an expand­ed account with pos­si­ble deviance and a glimpse into the char­ac­ters’ heads. These are ele­ments often­times hard to con­vey with­in the mul­ti­ple con­straints of a video game or movie. This book does not dis­ap­point, offer­ing tes­ta­ments from each of the main char­ac­ters in turn. There are small ele­ments of humor and like­ly lore direct­ly, word for word from the game (“You were almost a Jill Sand­wich!”) which is neato. I loved being able to see in my mind’s eye the exact loca­tions with­in the house the char­ac­ters were inves­ti­gat­ing, though, admit­ted­ly, the detailed descrip­tions were often skipped over by me in order to get on with the sto­ry. It was also neat to mark the deviances from the game itself which start­ed small then got pro­gres­sive­ly larg­er, I guess, in inter­est of future move­ment of the sto­ry out­side book one. There’s action from start to fin­ish with bare­ly time to breathe, just like a hor­ror thriller should be and the way game’s sto­ry was, too (apart from load screens).

Cons — Now, there were ele­ments that I found obnox­ious and kept annoy­ing me every time they popped up. In par­tic­u­lar the use of the word ‘copter repeat­ed­ly. I’ve sel­dom heard any­one call it a ‘copter. Helo, yes, bird, yes, chop­per, sure, and, well, heli­copter, comes to mind. Few uses of it for the sake of word vari­ety would have been fine, except, I seem to remem­ber almost a sin­gu­lar term usage. There was oth­er annoy­ing ter­mi­nol­o­gy like the many, many instances of sigh­ing (though to be fair I’d sigh a lot too in their predica­ment), the improp­er usage clip instead of mag, or mag­a­zine, for some rea­son hav­ing a hard time not using the word pis­tol or hand­gun, opt­ing instead to high­light the par­tic­u­lar mod­el of gun through­out the book. Maybe adver­tis­ing for Beretta, Rem­ing­ton and Colt? It’s not like I have mil­i­tary back­ground or firearms exper­tise but hav­ing played many video games and tak­en one live hand­gun course, the terms annoyed the heck out of me. Oth­er­wise, it’s a sol­id book.

Game Deviance - OKAY. so full dis­clo­sure: I nev­er actu­al­ly played the games myself, but I did spend many years watch­ing my broth­er play, so I was there for the ride, too. There are minor dif­fer­ences and then larg­er ones. Here they are in no par­tic­u­lar order.

Bar­ry Bur­ton being an uber-mus­cu­lar pow­er­house. Maybe it was the blocky graph­ics, but while you knew he was built with his revolver and all, the book goes out of its way to describe him as car­ing only about his fam­i­ly, guns, and weightlift­ing. He is ripped in this book. Maybe that’s why Chris went all goril­la in RE5.

Rebec­ca Cham­bers. I believe in the orig­i­nal RE1 (we’re not count­ing RE0, here) that she was only there for a short time with Chris, help­ing him with the piano puz­zle. In the book, he finds her and then they effec­tive­ly con­tin­ue the entire sto­ry togeth­er aside from one split-up in the begin­ning and towards the end. She ends up being extreme­ly use­ful with her child-prodi­gy-chemist-self despite hav­ing been on starts for mere­ly 3 weeks, and helps deci­pher the sci­en­tif­ic mum­bo-jum­bo, ulti­mate­ly being the one to blend the V‑Jolt her­bi­cide that liqui­fied Plant 42. Hon­est­ly, this made a lot of sense giv­en all the paper­work the labs would have on every­thing. I don’t remem­ber much else about Rebec­ca in the games, so flesh­ing her out in the book was nice (and now I’m on the 2nd book which is an orig­i­nal out­side the game for Rebec­ca).

Wesker. Well, hon­est­ly, the whole of RE’s lore is con­vo­lut­ed and con­fus­ing. Espe­cial­ly when it comes to Wesker. In this book, as far as the book cov­ers, Wesker’s entire aim was mon­ey. Lots of mon­ey. He Cap­tains the Rac­coon S.T.A.R.S divi­sion as of 6 weeks or so before the start of the Ark­lay events. As the sto­ry pro­gress­es, it high­lights his almost mani­a­cal need to con­trol his life, peo­ple, and prob­a­bly even­tu­al­ly the world. But it asserts his main aim: mon­ey from Umbrel­la. He had been involved with the research at Spencer’s man­sion, but most­ly as a secu­ri­ty over­seer. He manip­u­lates Bar­ry with fake black­mail and his beau­ti­ful plan to com­plete his mis­sion keeps devolv­ing, but his main plan was to kill every­one and leave no trace. Mul­ti­ple times he iter­at­ed his com­plete awe and respect for Tyrant. In the end, he gets bashed hard on the skull by Bar­ry’s revolver and though he man­aged to press the incin­er­ate but­ton, he…dies? At the claws of mutant mon­key mon­sters? It’s con­fus­ing. I did­n’t under­stand that part.

Jill Valen­tine - Jil­l’s sto­ry was large­ly unchanged from the game, I think. The only thing of note was that the book explained her B&E abil­i­ties as train­ing from her father, a noto­ri­ous thief. As it turns out, she only joined S.T.A.R.S to avoid land­ing the same prison fate as her father. She was manip­u­lat­ed by Bar­ry but was even­tu­al­ly saved by him too and they all end up escap­ing togeth­er. She and Bar­ry went the Hunter, Spi­der, Rolling Rock, Lab, Tyrant way.

Chris Red­field - Also large­ly unchanged from the game. He’s the gung-ho, straight-arrow of the group, with top marks­man abil­i­ties (giv­en time to aim) start­ing the sto­ry with sus­pi­cions about Umbrel­la, from a friend who was a top sci­en­tist there and dis­ap­peared. His and Rebec­ca­’s path take them through the Gar­den’s snake ocean and down through the Plant 42 path. He ends up being the one who shoots Tyrant with the Rock­et Launch­er.

Yawn - The giant snake isn’t near­ly as giant as in the game, but I like this ver­sion bet­ter because how in the heck does a crea­ture that ginor­mous feed and main­tain itself? It’s giant alright, but more boa-con­stric­tor-giant (din­ner­plate diam­e­ter) and strong enough to break a sup­port pil­lar with its tail. This is more believ­able. Chris takes it out.

Tyrant - An inter­est­ing note from #1‑fan-Wesker is that Tyrant should­n’t be able to sur­vive with­out reg­u­lar shots of adren­a­line. But some­how Tyrant was awok­en by Jill and Bar­ry? Or was it the destruc­tion sequence by Wesker? Regard­less, it punched its way out of its liq­uid filled cylin­der and bust­ed through the ceil­ing onto the heli­pad where it met its demise after almost killing Bar­ry.

Zom­bies - The zom­bie dogs were described as com­plete­ly skin­less. Inter­est­ing­ly, the author makes a dis­tinc­tion between the zom­bies in the man­sion vs. the lab which is great, in my opin­ion. The man­sion zom­bies are fresh­er and while still decay­ing, they are more “alive” than the lab­o­ra­to­ry ones which are described as des­ic­cat­ed since they were first to be infect­ed. I guess with­out live bod­ies to feed on, they have no sus­te­nance to keep up the flu­ids with­in their bod­ies which would there­fore keep their phys­i­cal bod­ies mov­ing. Also, there is no men­tion of the Crim­son Heads.

Resident Evil II — Caliban Cove (Sept 2012)

Orig­i­nal Sto­ry­line (Rebec­ca)

245 pages

Impres­sions

Since this vol­ume is an orig­i­nal sto­ry not inspired or based off any video game install­ment of the RE series, there is no need to ana­lyze deviance. A grip­ping adven­ture based with­in the RE1 and RE2 span. It starts off imme­di­ate­ly where the first vol­ume left off, with our 4 main pro­tag­o­nists embroiled in frus­tra­tion and dan­ger after the gen­er­al pub­lic, press, and Rac­coon RPD believe the offi­cial inves­ti­ga­tion report from Umbrel­la’s con­clu­sion that the S.T.A.R.S Bra­vo and Alpha teams messed up big time under the influ­ence of drugs and alco­hol. The explo­sions of Spencer man­sion explained by the real killers of Ark­lay acci­den­tal­ly ignit­ing old chem­i­cals in the base­ment of the build­ing while squat­ting in it. S.T.A.R.S itself has been bought out by Umbrel­la and our heroes left out high and dry, well in the sights of Umbrel­la’s clean-up crew. This is Rebec­ca Cham­bers’ time to shine! She is recruit­ed by David, Bar­ry’s old friend, to help secure damn­ing evi­dence against Umbrel­la up in Cal­iban Cove, anoth­er Umbrel­la research and test­ing facil­i­ty as well as anoth­er pos­si­ble acci­dent site. Rebec­ca, David, and 3 oth­er vol­un­teers are up to the task in a book I found extreme­ly dif­fi­cult to put down…so I did­n’t and am eager­ly await­ing the arrival of the next 5 books in the mail. With that said, this was prob­a­bly my least favorite book of the 7.

Pros - The mere fact that I could­n’t stop read­ing is a good tes­ta­ment to the action. Read­ers get a sim­i­lar nar­ra­tion as the first vol­ume, get­ting a 3rd per­son view of each char­ac­ter in turn, even the vil­lain. It’s a believ­able set up of loca­tion with new, unheard of Umbrel­la mon­sters, a new breed of zom­bies, and killing and death. There seems to be more inter­nal char­ac­ter strug­gles, but thank­ful­ly, the obnox­ious ter­mi­nol­o­gy of the last book (though the whole clip vs mag thing is still around) isn’t near­ly as notice­able. Rebec­ca­’s tal­ents are secured in this vol­ume, though she seems to take a back­seat to David. There are puz­zles! In the book! Rid­dles and such which is nice because as the video game instal­la­tions progress over time, those orig­i­nal ele­ments of the game have effec­tive­ly ceased to exist. Noth­ing ter­ri­bly com­plex, but present, nonethe­less.

Cons — For a book that fea­tures Rebec­ca on the cov­er, she does­n’t appear to take the lime­light here. One would argue that David is the main lead, though it is some­what close. I’m dis­ap­point­ed by that. Most­ly, Rebec­ca got to act like the medic of the group. There weren’t real­ly any super sci­en­tif­ic papers for her to exam­ine which was the orig­i­nal point of her addi­tion to the mis­sion. Parts of the action were con­vo­lut­ed, too, and dif­fi­cult to under­stand, such as the cli­max of the sto­ry, the big escape. To me, it just kind of hap­pened with a great KABOOM. The main vil­lain’s delu­sions are strange, too, but that’s writ­ten off because he’s insane. The biggest neg­a­tive for me, was the inex­plic­a­ble addi­tion of romance. WHY video game writ­ers or writ­ers in gen­er­al feel it nec­es­sary to add that ele­ment to an oth­er­wise excit­ing action sto­ry is beyond me. If there’s a female pro­tag­o­nist, there’s a strange need to pair her up with some dash­ing young male. Look at RE3, Code: Veron­i­ca. Even She­va in RE5. We’re in a life-or-death sit­u­a­tion, we lit­er­al­ly just met, let’s fall in love! The fun­ny thing is that the author rec­og­nizes this with­in the sto­ry a few times. Why males aren’t sub­ject to the same issues in these sto­ries is beyond me. Plus, for some rea­son, the female char­ac­ter tends to quit being amaz­ing once she finds this love inter­est. There’s a scene at the end where *start spoiler/* her love inter­est’s zom­bie self-com­mits sui­cide and she just freaks out. I dun­no, maybe I’m old and jad­ed, but if my brand-new love inter­est shoots anoth­er team­mate because he’s just been turned into a mind­less zom­bie, I’d be hap­py that he killed him­self instead of killing more peo­ple. Sad, yes, freak out, no. She did­n’t seem to be as out­ward­ly moved when the oth­er team­mate was killed. */end spoil­er* Ugh. That whole romance thing always under­mines a per­fect­ly good hero­ine’s game. Seri­ous­ly. Stop doing that! Per­haps that’s what Cap­com want­ed for the writer to add since they fol­low that for­mu­la in every RE game any­ways. So aside from the need­less romance and Rebec­ca­’s lack of oomph, the book was good and rec­om­mend­ed.

Resident Evil III — City of the Dead (Sept 2012)

Res­i­dent Evil 2 (Leon, Claire)

317 pages

Impres­sions

The third install­ment of the book adap­ta­tion of the Res­i­dent Evil games fol­lows the escapades of Leon S. Kennedy and Claire Red­field, two ama­teurs with no spe­cial train­ing who were thrust into the hor­ri­fy­ing world of BOWs and exper­i­men­tal fall­out. This book starts off a series of news arti­cles cov­er­ing events right after Res­i­dent Evil one. It touch­es a lit­tle on the actions of Chris, Jill, and Bar­ry, before jump­ing right into Claire and Leon’s sto­ry. Over­all, it is a great read.

(and, sad­ly, I nev­er wrote a review right after read­ing, so I will have to reread it and come back)

Resident Evil IV — Underworld (Oct 2012)

Orig­i­nal Sto­ry­line (Claire, Leon, Rebec­ca)

266 pages

Review

Claire, Leon, and Rebec­ca embark on a, rather, coerced endeav­or to hit a remote Umbrel­la facil­i­ty with ex‑S.T.A.R.S. oper­a­tives John and David from Cal­iban Cove. There, they get split up and must sur­vive not only Umbrel­la defense forces, but the bio­log­i­cal hor­rors that await them there. There’s a com­bi­na­tion of action, mon­sters, puz­zles, and fights that make it fast paced. Of all the books, this one prob­a­bly is the best at nar­rat­ing the com­bi­na­tion of chal­lenges the teams must face in a Res­i­dent Evil world. There is lit­tle in-brain delv­ing, with much more focus upon sto­ry and action.

Pros - Claire and Rebec­ca! Togeth­er! Yay! That’s some­thing that would be neat to see in the Res­i­dent Evil games (instead, you get Claire and pot­ty-mouthed Moira…). This book touch­es a lit­tle bit more on the author-inspired Claire/Leon bud­ding rela­tion­ship. How­ev­er, they are sep­a­rat­ed in the action of the sto­ry. It’s nice to see some puz­zle-solv­ing which is key to the orig­i­nal RE games, and for Rebec­ca­’s sup­posed genius to be uti­lized. Also, there are new mon­sters! Anoth­er main­stay of the RE series. Chris and John must fight through and expe­ri­ence some nasty new crea­tures. Because this is an orig­i­nal entry into the RE sto­ry­line, the author is able to write an extreme­ly sol­id and all-encom­pass­ing adven­ture. I was hon­est­ly, a lit­tle dis­ap­point­ed that it was an orig­i­nal sto­ry and not the game sto­ries, but I very much enjoyed it.

Cons - The main vil­lain of the book, while por­trayed as bum­bling and loony, ends up being a very lucky indi­vid­ual, and it annoyed me how he was able to get away/overpower them every time. The escape sequence at the end also seemed a lit­tle bit unbe­liev­able, giv­en the sup­posed super long ele­va­tor.

Resident Evil V — Nemesis (Nov 2012)

Res­i­dent Evil 3 (Jill, Car­los)

295 pages

Impres­sions

After reread­ing this book, I think I have to say that this is prob­a­bly the best of all of them. It has every­thing: action, part­ner­ship, vil­lain, hope that gets dashed, a puzzle…it just has it all. It fol­lows that sto­ry of Jill Valen­tine after her events in the Ark­lay Moun­tains, and reminds you lat­er that she’s expe­ri­enc­ing every­thing at the same time that Leon and Claire are expe­ri­enc­ing their adven­ture. Car­los, the young Umbrel­la mer­ce­nary, is thrown into the mix along with treach­er­ous vil­lain, Umbrel­la’s Nicholai, who is on a mis­sion to erase all the oth­er Watch­dogs for lever­age and mon­ey. They all cross paths but get split up in the same way that the game does. The star of the show, Neme­sis, gets some great “screen time” here as he relent­less­ly pur­sues Jill. They work through the Din­er, Rac­coon’s PD, the park, the gas sta­tion, the train where Mikhail hero­ical­ly sac­ri­fices him­self, the chapel, the hos­pi­tal, and then final­ly the Umbrel­la ware­house.

Pros — Fast-paced and excit­ing, a great glimpse into the heads of the char­ac­ters, fol­low­ing Nicholai’s exploits dur­ing the sto­ry. I was kept want­i­ng more and more, eager to keep read­ing. I could feel the char­ac­ters’ hopes and fears. It holds well to the game’s sto­ry­line (unlike a par­tic­u­lar “remake” that was just ter­ri­ble in every way) while main­tain­ing Jil­l’s strength (once again unlike a cer­tain “remake”). Both she and Car­los are capa­ble and skilled sol­diers and are por­trayed as such. As usu­al, S.D. Per­ry explores the thoughts of the char­ac­ters, hint­ing at pos­si­ble feel­ings that Car­los has towards Jill, but then real­is­ti­cal­ly holds off inside a life-or-death emer­gency sit­u­a­tion. There is a good overview at the end of the book that ties 2 of the sto­ries togeth­er.

Cons — I felt that Nicholai’s psy­chot­ic, pow­er-lord­ing char­ac­ter is overused espe­cial­ly amongst the books in this series…but then again, that’s exact­ly what all these vil­lains in the games are like. Most­ly, I end­ed up skipped read­ing those parts because he was…almost too crazy. The end­ing fight seemed a lit­tle rushed and a bit anti­cli­mac­tic.

Resident Evil VI — Code: Veronica (Dec 2012)

Res­i­dent Evil Code: Veron­i­ca (Claire, Stephen, Chris, Wesker)

257 pages

Impres­sions

This book nar­rates the adven­ture of Claire Red­field, cap­tured after a botched mis­sion and sent to Rock­fort, one of Umbrel­la’s prison islands. A great retelling of a game that is over­all a bit con­fus­ing in my mem­o­ry. The best part is get­ting into Alfred’s mind. I already knew the big secret regard­ing the twins from the game, but the big reveal was still well-done and poignant. The meld­ing of infor­ma­tion regard­ing the from the bits and pieces in the game is great because it puts it all togeth­er. This book also paints the Claire/Stephen rela­tion­ship more mas­ter­ful­ly and clear­ly than in the game (and more impor­tant­ly, sat­is­fac­to­ri­ly). I actu­al­ly like the book bet­ter because it gives more insight into the mind of the char­ac­ters. Claire just feels more fleshed out as books are best at accom­plish­ing, any­ways. Chris’s pres­ence, though fleet­ing, is also on par with the game, as he has to deal with the big bat­tles. Even Wesker’s role is ample. Over­all, it is a great read, and it kept my inter­est steadi­ly and eas­i­ly. This was the fastest read out of all 7 books for me.

Pros — Get­ting into the heads of Claire, Stephen, Alfred, Alex­ia, and even Wesker. It gives the game sto­ry much-need­ed flesh. Infor­ma­tion and lore found in pieces through the game are all spelled out here, coher­ent­ly. The rela­tion­ship between Claire and Stephen is, thank­ful­ly, sat­is­fac­to­ry. The author con­tin­ues to main­tain that she and Leon have a bud­ding, pos­si­ble rela­tion­ship. Alfred is explored, as well, much to my inter­est. In gen­er­al, the explo­ration of the char­ac­ters them­selves (even the guy that frees Claire in the begin­ning!) is excel­lent.

Cons — Now, I don’t remem­ber 100% what hap­pened in the game regard­ing Chris, but here, in the book, he is a lit­tle bit of an after­thought, added in per the sto­ry­line. He’s not near­ly as fleshed out as all the oth­er char­ac­ters. Per­haps, there’s not too much to him to flesh out? There are many mon­sters in Code Veron­i­ca, and I feel like the book focused more on the peo­ple than the mon­sters them­selves. The end­ing sequence with the boss fights at the end were a bit under­dra­mat­ic, a rather bor­ing end to the omnipo­tent Alex­ia. Now, that might be that way in the game, too, but it was quick and anti­cli­mac­tic in the book, which is dis­ap­point­ing giv­en that this is a Res­i­dent Evil sto­ry.

Resident Evil VII — Zero Hour (Jan 2013)

Res­i­dent Evil 0 (Rebec­ca, Bil­ly)

247 pages

Impres­sions

The last of the 7‑book series is based off of Res­i­dent Evil 0, cov­er­ing the expe­ri­ences of the ill-fat­ed Bra­vo Team that set off the actions of the Alpha team in Res­i­dent Evil. Rook­ie Rebec­ca Cham­bers, a young genius recruit­ed as a field medic for the S.T.A.R.S. team finds that she is one of the few if not the only sur­vivor of the heli­copter crash. On a creepy train full of dead pas­sen­gers, she finds her­self begrudg­ing­ly teamed up with sus­pect­ed crim­i­nal Lt. William “Bil­ly” Coen in order to stay alive. The book is fast-paced and action-packed, flow­ing quick­ly through the events. Along the way, Rebec­ca not only uncov­ers the hor­ri­ble mys­ter­ies of the Umbrel­la train­ing facil­i­ty, but Bil­ly’s unfor­tu­nate past. As they help each oth­er over­come the mon­sters there, a pal­pa­ble con­nec­tion grows between the two. It’s some­thing that the game nev­er cov­ered yet would make sense giv­en the cir­cum­stances. as it turns out, their entire trek through the facil­i­ty was guid­ed by a crazed and trans­formed Dr. James Mar­cus. The sto­ry­telling itself is great, the action is grip­ping, and the mys­ter­ies fun to uncov­er. A won­der­ful install­ment and a sad end to the well-writ­ten book adap­tion to the orig­i­nal Res­i­dent Evil games.

Pros - A need­ed look into the minds and feel­ings of Rebec­ca and Billy–something the game did­n’t, and real­ly, could­n’t accu­rate­ly do. The best part is the end real­iza­tion that any rela­tion­ship would be out of reach, and that wist­ful, hands-off end is seri­ous­ly the best ending…and fod­der for any fan­fic­tion writ­ers. LOL. They’re basi­cal­ly in a cri­sis and there’s no time for mushy stuff to drag every­one down. The book is just one whirl­wind action sto­ry. It fast! It’s action! Just like in the game. The sto­ry and degra­da­tion of James Mar­cus who had delu­sions of con­trol over his cre­ation is also a great, nat­ur­al path. I real­ly enjoyed the end­ing of the book, and, real­ly, the entire book.

Cons - Hon­est­ly, the worst part was that the book end­ed. Also, I’m not sure what the plans were, nec­es­sar­i­ly, for mak­ing more books, but it all seems rather unre­solved when it comes to the books’ addi­tion of the Trent, the elu­sive man who orches­trat­ed most of the series. I guess the open-faced end­ing is just like the games, but still. It left me want­i­ng more of some­thing that does­n’t exist!