Tie-in Novels

[The Pita]

Not sure that should be the title, but I'm not sure what to call these. I mean novels on the Starcraft, Warcraft, Star Wars, or any other universe like that.

Are there any particularly good ones? Bad ones?

On the "best" end, I think, the Kamigawa trilogy (from Magic: The Gathering) is excellent, from the "complete sociopath" protagonist to the rather powerful ending.

On the worst end, and, in fact, the reason I started this thread, is Shadow of the Xel'Naga by Gabriel Mesta, otherwise known as Kevin Anderson. This book is such an unbelievable pile of tripe that Chris Metzen should be ashamed for creating Starcraft. Blizzard Entertainment should be ashamed of existing. The entire human race should commit seppuku for allowing this tragedy to befall anyone's eyes.

Basically, it's a shit book. Although, if I am to be perfectly honest, the Onslaught trilogy of Magic: The Gathering novels is worse, mostly because it also wastes the abilities of an author who wrote some much better licensed stuff (The Thran). And I guess the Warcraft manga is also crap.

[Peadar]

I think the term you're looking for is "Tie-in novels"...

[SkynJay]

Well, Star Wars are the only ones I am experienced with, but I will give you my short list. (And I have ignored the prequels, so the list I have read is only the post New Hope)

Best

I Jedi

Thrawn Trilogy

The X-Wing books kept going up in quality and were enjoyable to me, throughout.

There are also some of the New Jedi Order books that belong in the best list.

Worst

Jedi Academy/Dark Saber - Keven J Anderson should be banned from the StarWars universe.

Han Solo Trilogy- AC Crispen - I know at least one person on the board disagrees with me on this, but the writer just cant write.

Deathtroopers- Really? A cliched zombie book, with Han Solo thrown in for no reason? Bah

[Werthead]

Best:

Rise and Fall of a Dragon King (Lynn Abbey, Dark Sun)

Traitor (Matt Stover, Star Wars)

Vendetta (Peter David, Star Trek)

The Shadow Within (Jeanne Cavelos, Babylon 5)

The Legions of Fire Trilogy (Peter David, Babylon 5)

The Eisenhorn Trilogy (Dan Abnett, Warhammer 40,000)

The Ravenor Trilogy (Dan Abnett, Warhammer 40,000)

The Gaunt's Ghosts Series (Dan Abnett, Warhammer 40,000)

The Ciaphas Cain Series (Sandy Mitchell, Warhammer 40,000)

Worst:

Absolutely fucking anything by Kevin J. Anderson. Seriously, what the shit?

I've also heard great things about Paul Kemp, to the point where I'm reading his Erevis Cale Trilogy (Forgotten Realms) in a few weeks.

Anyone tried Peter Watts' Crysis novel? The game didn't have a hugely complex narrative but OTOH it's Watts, so might be worth a look. Jeff VanderMeer also wrote a Predator novel (of all things) and Tobias Buckell a Halo one, but I don't know how good they are.

[Spaceman Hobbes]

Jedi Academy/Dark Saber - Keven J Anderson should be banned from the StarWars universe.

From everything.

[Drowned Crow]

Anyone tried Peter Watts' Crysis novel? The game didn't have a hugely complex narrative but OTOH it's Watts, so might be worth a look.

The story, as you would expect, isn't great. But it is very well written and as atmospheric as Watts' other works. It's probably the only tie-in novel I'd recommend.

[felice]

Anything by Lawrence Miles - Doctor Who or Faction Paradox. The standard of the seventh and eighth Doctor novels was generally pretty high, though there were some duds.

[ultraman7k]

for as much love as baldur's gate gets when discussing gaming...

the novels should be destroyed.

[Grack21]

Oh fuck me sideways, Anderson has a fucking pseudonym? Seriously, that's like a serial killer going on vacation in another country cause he NEEDS MORE PREY.

Also, the Starcraft/Warcraft people should be thankful Games Workshop never sued the fuck out of them.

[Spring Bass]

Anderson's "licensed" stuff seems to be abysmal in virtually every franchise he works in. The Jedi Academy trilogy is terrible (although not the worst in the Star Wars EU), and the young adult Star Wars novels he wrote are pretty bad as well. His Dune novels with Brian Herbert got worse and worse, to the point where Dune 7 and 8 were (from what I've heard) almost unbelievably bad. Pita Enigma mentioned Shadow of the Xel-Naga, and I agree that it's the worst novel in the Starcraft franchise (you have to read it to realize how bad it really is).

EDIT: Sorry, this new post system is throwing me off.

I haven't read the Dune novels I mentioned above, but I did read a rather caustic, spoileriffic synopsis of them:

A ship full of heroes escapes from the old empire on a cloaking ship, since the end of the last book that Frank Herbert wrote before he died. in They're being pursued by some kind of old man, and a woman who are farmers, and have some sort of intergalactic 'tachyon net'. Sure.

A bunch of nothing happens, before it's revealed that those two are really Omnius (AKA, Skynet) and Erasmus (AKA, Robo-Snydley Whiplash), the machine overlords from the butlerian Jihad prequels. To combat them, the crew of this ship clone copies of heroes from the first few done Books, like Paul Atreides, Jessica, Dr. Yeuh, Leto II, Stilgar, Liet Kynes and Alia Atreides.

The machines use their arcane 'mathematics' to somehow predict this scheme with probability. They clone a Baron Harkonnen to train an Evil Clone of Paul Atreides, since they want his powers as a Kwesachs Haderach.

Yeah. That's right. There's a good clone and evil clone. A bunch more useless stuff happens, and some Tleilaxu gene-splicers make sandworms that can swim in lakes. This plot point serves only to create a Holy Grail of Super Spice, and is afterwards forgotten. Oh, and Stilgar and Liet's clones do absolutely nothing of value and fade away into the background.

Eventually, the cloak ship gets captured. Good Paul has to knife-fight with Evil Paul, within an Evil City made of Evil Spikes. Good Paul is somewhat stabbed in the heart, and Evil Paul claims the holy grail of ultra spice. He chooses... poorly, and is put into a coma for all eternity. Good Paul meanwhile, gets better from being stabbed in the heart.

All is not well though! In the Empire, the Machine Fleet uses the 'Battlestar Galactica' hacking trick to fry out computers that are being used by the human defenders, turning off their ships. So overconfident, they don't even blow up any of the human ships as they fly by them. All seems lost, as the machines advance on important human worlds...

OH wait! Deus Ex Machina! Norma Cenva, the Mary-Sue character from the Butlerian Jihad prequels (who used to be ugly, unloved, but then became a beautiful shapeshifting sorceress goddess who invented FTL Travel, Spice, the Guild, the Bene Gesserit, and basically everything in the Universe...) comes along with her Time Ship and ascended powers, sweeping aside the Machine Fleet with a bunch of random Navigators guarding her. She then flies off to the Machine Capitol, where she sucks Evil Overlord Omnius into another dimension along with herself, where they fight for all eternity. Rather like how that episode of Stargate ended, where Anubis gets stuck fighting an Ascended Being for all eternity.

Good Paul then gets his powers back. But wait! He realizes that in the end, he's not really the Ubermensch Kweisachs Haderach. It was Duncan Idaho all along, the secondary character of the first book that made random appearances back ever sense! Who would have thought?

Now that someone's mentioned it, Duncan realizes he has godlike powers. He declares that he wants peace between humans and machines. But oh no! The Machine's Shapeshifter Allies are turning on them, and now poise to conquer the Universe! They all sudden fall dead, as the robot Erasmus turns them off with a mental kill-switch. All across the entire galaxy. oops.

Whatever. Duncan engages a mind-meld with the Robot Erasmus, by touching foreheads. Somehow, they exchange their knowledge, and Erasmus asks to be euthanized. Duncan turns off Erasmus, and goes then to use his control codes over the machines to usher in a new age of freedom and progress. All of the unsavory organizations (The Tleilaxu, traitorous Ixians and greedy guild) turn entirely good. The Ixians produce helpful technology. The guild becomes a humanitarian organization. The Tleilaxu promise to use their gene knowledge only for helping people and to no longer harvest women. The Bene-Gesserit Schism ends as everyone lives together in peace.

Clone Paul goes to snuggle up with his girlfriend, Clone Chani.

The end.

http://bbs.stardestr...2674&hilit=Dune

[Grack21]

His Star Wars novels are NOT the worst?

I beg to differ. I've read at least 80 percent of them. And even amongst the shit, his smell bad.

[Spring Bass]

His Star Wars novels are NOT the worst?

I beg to differ. I've read at least 80 percent of them. And even amongst the shit, his smell bad.

Even compared to Traviss's wankery? Or the awful New Rebellion, Courtship of Princess Leia, and Crystal Star? Crystal Star is probably the worst.

[Spaceman Hobbes]

The darkest day in human history is the day KJA picked up a pen.

And Boba Fett is an Immortal Perfect Space Bounty Hunter Jesus. I see nothing wrong with Traviss's work.

[Spring Bass]

The darkest day in human history is the day KJA picked up a pen.

And Boba Fett is an Immortal Perfect Space Bounty Hunter Jesus. I see nothing wrong with Traviss's work.

The guy who got his ass kicked by a blind man in Return of the Jedi?

He's possibly the most over-rated Star Wars character in the EU, and we can thank Traviss and her Mandalorian wankery for that.

[Spaceman Hobbes]

The guy who got his ass kicked by a blind man in Return of the Jedi?

He's possibly the most over-rated Star Wars character in the EU, and we can thank Traviss and her Mandalorian wankery for that.

I thought Immortal Perfect Space Bounty Hunter Jesus was hyperbolic enough to make my sarcasm apparent. I agree with you 100%. Traviss was too busy trying to convince us that the mandalorians were better than the jedi to write a decent book.

[Spring Bass]

I thought Immortal Perfect Space Bounty Hunter Jesus was hyperbolic enough to make my sarcasm apparent. I agree with you 100%. Traviss was too busy trying to convince us that the mandalorians were better than the jedi to write a decent book.

Believe it or not, I've actually seen Traviss fans describe Boba Fett in really hyperbolic ways on the web, so I wasn't sure. My bad - my Internet Sarcasm Detector needs work.

[Spaceman Hobbes]

I'm not surprised. Traviss fans aren't exactly rational thinkers.

[The Pita]

I finished Shadow of the Xel'Naga, and started Speed of Darkness. Speed of Darkness is the single worst titled book I've ever found, but has an amazing first two chapters. The rest, so far, aren't as good. Shadow of the Xel'Naga, now that I've finished it, is as bad as I've described. Worse, even, for daring to name drop Brood War while getting all of canon completely and utterly fucked up, and absolutely destroying characters that Jeff Grubb helped make amazing in Liberty's Crusade. Liberty's Crusade, BTW, was okay but not great.

Does anyone know if Test of Metal (Magic: the Gathering novel) lives up to the hype? I keep hearing how amazing it is, and how Agents of Artifice (which I thought was rather decent, even if the beginning is unnecessarily convoluted) isn't anywhere near as good.

[ICE CROW]

Best:

Rise and Fall of a Dragon King (Lynn Abbey, Dark Sun)

Traitor (Matt Stover, Star Wars)

Vendetta (Peter David, Star Trek)

The Shadow Within (Jeanne Cavelos, Babylon 5)

The Legions of Fire Trilogy (Peter David, Babylon 5)

The Eisenhorn Trilogy (Dan Abnett, Warhammer 40,000)

The Ravenor Trilogy (Dan Abnett, Warhammer 40,000)

The Gaunt's Ghosts Series (Dan Abnett, Warhammer 40,000)

The Ciaphas Cain Series (Sandy Mitchell, Warhammer 40,000)

Worst:

Absolutely fucking anything by Kevin J. Anderson. Seriously, what the shit?

I've also heard great things about Paul Kemp, to the point where I'm reading his Erevis Cale Trilogy (Forgotten Realms) in a few weeks.

Anyone tried Peter Watts' Crysis novel? The game didn't have a hugely complex narrative but OTOH it's Watts, so might be worth a look. Jeff VanderMeer also wrote a Predator novel (of all things) and Tobias Buckell a Halo one, but I don't know how good they are.

Holy Crap, there were Babylon 5 novels. this is the first i have ever heard about this, i got to hunt these down. Does J.M Stracynski play a role in their writing at all. Also is whats covered in these novels official recognized as being part of the Babylon 5 History? Huge B5 fan

[SkynJay]

Even compared to Traviss's wankery? Or the awful New Rebellion, Courtship of Princess Leia, and Crystal Star? Crystal Star is probably the worst.

Crystal Star just felt like the author had never even heard of Star Wars before writing a book in its world. Traiviss has annoyed me beyond reason, but she has some ability to write. But I still hate KJA's books the most. His early plot lines were so important to the EU, that it has forced better authors to constantly retcon his dumb plot lines. Plus, I forced my self through the young jedi books so I could figure out some of the NJO plot-lines, and the writing is just insulting.

Oh, and I actually liked most of the New Rebellion, the author just ran out of steam and slapped out a crappy ending.