Mass Effect: Retribution was well-written, plotted, and paced, but suffered from side-quest-itis pretty badly. The problem with writing tie-in novels for an RPG in which your choices affect the game's outcome is that it's almost impossible to write a canon novel with the characters that we love without delegitimising some players' choices.
Retribution suffers from trying to tell a story that has already been tackled in part with other characters in the games. Most of the novel's events are mentioned in-game, and I didn't feel that the book itself did enough to flesh out those snippets of info in any truly meaningful way. It felt like a checklist of events and character cameos rather than a novel that could stand on its own.
Again, if you're a Mass Effect fan, Retribution does its job by adding flavour to the in-game universe. But it's not a great novel in its own right.
Reviewed by pamela on
Reading updates
- 2 June, 2021: Started reading
- 4 June, 2021: Finished reading
- 4 June, 2021: Reviewed