User blog comment:Hawki/Ranking the StarCraft Novels/@comment-250398-20161019154255

Pretty spot on list. I was considering doing something similar myself but didn't think there'd be much interest, usually a reddit thread pops up asking where to start with books though which gives some opportunity for discussion; I still feel the DT trilogy is the best place to start.

A few stray observations I like to make.

Oh god yeah Shadow of the Xel'naga is probably the worst book Blizzard's put out, even Knaak's writing is at least serviceable if dull. I honestly can't think of any good reason for its existence in the timeline, except for the aforementioned energy creatures. But I will say it at least inspired a very good SC2 custom campaign somehow.

The odd thing is I usually see people touting how good Liberty's Crusade was, I thought I was in the minority of recommending people against it. I enjoyed the character of Liberty even if he did feel self-insert, but it has the problem of any retelling that doesn't go a different direction (like QoB) where I go "well that's not how I interpreted this scene." And not all universe expansion is good expansion. Duke's doofousness is played up to comedic levels. They made resoc into "marine zombies," which would unfortunately be the dominant interpretation over the Speed of Darkness "factory stamped memories" interpretation. The Confederate media saying that "mind control drugs" were used (dunno why that bugged me so much). I felt like it retroactively turned a gritty science fiction story into a more pulpy, light science fiction universe, and it never jived with me.

Ugh Spectres. I can think of a good number of things wrong with the writing; Nova's entirely reactionary to every other character. It largely has to do with it being the FPS plot, but then they try to put in characters interacting with her and it all falls apart. She doesn't react to the frankly ridiculous hate she gets for being a psychic. She reacts to realizing she's in love with Malcolm the same way someone would realize they're wearing the wrong shirt to work (incidentally why does Nova have to have a love interest?). She figures out the connection between the Umojans and Spectres but then mutters some quick resolution before getting kidnapped. Also the villain was so horribly wasted. They build up that, ok, maybe Mengsk deserves to fall and the spectres have a point, hell the Umojans are working with them and they're traditionally good guys. But then we realize NOPE Hauler actually is Hitler Satan and wants to control the universe. All nuance gone, Dominion good Spectres bad.

I think it's preference, but Heaven's Devils and Speed of Darkness are my favorite books because of their military science fiction roots. Like you said with Speed of Darkness, Heaven's Devils for me was showing me the nitty gritty of how the terran forces worked, and that for me showed that even in spite of the corruption and setbacks they can be a competent force. Plus I enjoyed how only Raynor and Tychus were game characters, and seemed to be characters caught in a conflict bigger than themselves. Raynor grew with the story too, and yeah a lot of the side characters were a bit flat, but their presence and limited interactions with the main cast gave more depth to them. But as you said I think it's difference in what we like in StarCraft; I love the scifi military fantasy.

I also love Devil's Due but christ almighty the story has some problems for me. Come off of Heaven's Devils, excited to see Raynor, Tychus and Kydd off on bandit adventures, especially Kydd since I see a lot of potential in where his character can go. So then they decide to not only not include Kydd but just off him in the first two chapters to set up the villain. Then off the rest of the surviving Heaven's Devils. Not that I don't mind character death, but part of the books I like is the expansion of the universe, so just undoing one I really like by basically dropping the cast into a well sets it off to a bad start.

Then we get the difference between Heaven's Devils Raynor and Devil's Due Raynor, and Golden's greatest strength becomes her weakness. She does Raynor and Tychus utterly fantastically, and I can hear them from the games in every line of dialogue. But that's the problem, Raynor here feels like the games. No to little growth like in Heaven's Devils, most of it is told to us rather than shown. He feels like he went from Raynor justifying some robberies to Raynor settling down. And then we get the ending, where he goes to Mar Sara, deciding he's done with a criminal life, then goes "oh wait I forgot something," then proceeds to commit one last killing before going "ok I can be redeemed now." The pacing of killing Vanderpool just felt... Not great. It undermined what they were attempting to do with Raynor, that the robbery and killing couldn't be justified for him. I just bitched a lot but I did love Devil's Due because of the solid cast, worldbuilding, and fun environments. Golden does characters and universe well, much like Blizzard themselves, even when her plots are a bit weak.

The others I agree with, DT trilogy started strong but weakened, Flashpoint was great except the romance arc, and I love the Speed of Darkness with a passion.

I, Mengsk at number 1 is a bit curious for me but I get the angle. For me it had a strong start and a decent end but a very weak middle, and I have a bit of a bias. In the "greats" of the 40k writing community Graham McNeil was always a writer I could never really catch onto. Partially because Space Marines are boring when compared with Dan Abnett and Sandy Mitchel's portrayal of the normal Guardsman (like I said, military scifi bias) but also there's something about McNeil's characters that I can't grab onto them compared to, say, Golden. I loved the childhood of Mengsk, and the ending fight with the arrival of the UED was a good way to wrap things up, but Golden's interpretation of Valerian has made him one of the better characters for me, and seeing him here and in WoL always felt a good bit weaker by comparison.

Really I had wish they divided it between two books like with Raynor's story, like I said the middle falls apart when he's rushing from marine to prospector to revolutionary without much time inbetween to actually take in anything he's doing. The death of his family was well done, but because of how rushed it was the nuking of Korhal just felt like another quick footnote in his life, not given the full impact it deserved. It also commits the cardinal sin for me that Heaven's Devils did so well to avoid; in Heaven's Devils all the characters around Raynor and Tychus are new people, with different stories that likely won't get brought up in the games but give a broader perspective to the universe. In I, Mengsk, when he joins the marines he gets assigned to Duke, in a great example of a coincidence plot. Not only that, he gets assigned to "Dominion Company," and stops just short of going "huh, if I established a monarchy over the terrans of the Koprulu Sector that sure would be a good name!" I had this problem with the otherwise great Star Trek Enterprise. There's foreshadowing and then there's sacrificing character and universe to throw in nods and references that out of context just serve to weaken the story. They did that so well for other sections of the book, which is why that one part hurt so much to read for me. But it's not a bad book by any means, certainly still in the top 8 for me.

Just ranted a lot, like I said I agree with most of the list and a lot comes down to preference. Not the most optimistic about Evolution though, it seems to have gone through a number of rewrites just based on what we've been getting, and that usually leads to less than desirable results when the writer's vision gets compromised. We'll have to see though, I love everything about Zahn's Thrawn books so this could still be good.