Starcraft: Evolution By Timothy Zahn

Audiobook Edition, Narrator Christopher Ryan Grant

Finished on 2/1/2017

1 Marine, 1 Reaper, 1 SCV, 1 Ghost and 1 Dark Templar out of 5

Spoiler-tastic Review

I liked this book. As you can probably guess by the fact that I read a franchise novel, I’m a fan of the Starcraft franchise. The author did a great job of reading the source material and getting small details right (like Phoenixes using ion cannons, or the difference between psi blades and warp blades). I must complement him because he managed to cite facts that I did not know myself as a fan of the franchise.

But at the same time the author made a few lore mistakes which I noticed(for example the Protoss weren’t called the Daelaam, Kerrigan sometimes being called The Queen of the Blades instead of Queen of Blades). These were small errors which I didn’t mind too much.

Now let’s talk characters.

So apparently Zagara is a hardcore pacifist now. Did not see that one coming. Not only that but Abathur is now a conniving jerk as opposed to the usual oblivious jerk. I don’t think either of these are out of character. Kerrigan taught Zag ‘vision’ in SC2, which could include pacifism as a strategy for surviving in a wartorn galaxy. Abathur was always a bit of a jerk so this newest development was fine in my book. Plus the author (and the voice actor!) got Abathur’s voice right.

Artanis seems to have forgotten Kerrigan’s involvement with the Xel’naga at the beginning of the book, which was weird. Also his hyper-trusting personality from SC2 has evaporated and been replaced with someone far more skeptical, for better or for worse. Emperor Valerian and Admiral Horner both seemed consistent with their in-game characters, so that’s good. Finally I liked the new characters. Not all of the new guys had character arcs but ghost-girl and Dark-Templar-Researcher did have good character development, as well as the racist-against-protoss guy. I was hoping for a Sgt. Hammer cameo, but to no avail.

Net total, if you like Starcraft’s lore this is a book you’ll be interested in, or if you like the HotS characters of Abathur, Artanis or Zagara.