"Mass Effect: Retribution"

Mass Effect: Retribution (Drew "Added his last name to my spellcheck and then realized this is his last novel" Karpyshyn)

I liked this book, but I liked the author's previous novel (Ascension) a little bit more; I thought this was still pretty good, but this book suffers from two handicaps that the earlier book doesn't. The first one is that this is a kind-of sequel to Ascension, or at least stars charecters from it; If you haven't read Ascension, I don't know that you'll be able to follow what the fuck is happening. The second one, and the one that really bugged me personally, is that five of the six main charecters appear in Mass Effect 3, and most of them are major charecters on top of that, which means that there isn't a huge amount of tension when they face off in this book - you don't have to be psychic to figure out that, for example, the Illusive Man isn't going to get killed in a spinoff novel. This means that when you have Kai Leng and Admiral Anderson in what's supposted to be a tense standoff, you already know that they're both going to make it out alive so they can appear in Mass Effect 3. Those issues aside, if you've already read Ascension, I'd recommend this, but otherwise I wouldn't go out of your way to read it.

Grade for N7s: B-
Normal Civilian Grade: C-