Backstage - OOC Forums
EVE-Online RP Discussion and Resources => CCP Public Library => Topic started by: Makoto Priano on 07 Jun 2013, 11:37
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Hey folks! After a lengthy period away, I've been getting back into EVE these past few months. It's been mostly fun and games, of course, but I let my curiosity get the best of me and snagged the three EVE novels while I catch up on PF. It took forever to force my way through Empyrean Age, and I'm now working on Burning Life.
The question: what are your folks' thoughts on these books?
In my case, well-- my god. Empyrean Age. From the Women In Refrigerators (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/WomenInRefrigerators) moment with PM Midular (SERIOUSLY? It was almost flippant!), to the three instances of Heroic, Sorrowful Single Tears (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SingleTear), or the fact that a -novel- fails the Bechdel Test...?
Anyway. So far, I'm not far into Burning Life, but it seems to be a better read, if a touch focused on 'explaining the game' as a world.
Thoughts? Recommendations? Must-reads?
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TBL is a bit bland, but works well if you approach it as an exposition tour of the EVE universe.
As for the two novels by Tony Gonzales, the short version of the advice is "No."
The long version, "NoooOooooOOooooo!"
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Yeah. God. Baron Karsoth Harkonnen, the Minmatar Failed State--er, Republic, the Gallente Totally-Paradise-And-Best-At-Everything (was Gonzalez a GalFed RPer, or...?), the Caldari-- well. How to describe that. Was he trying to model the Caldari State off 1900s Russia, with serfdom and a tsar?
Alright. Not venting. Really.
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TBL is a bit bland, but works well if you approach it as an exposition tour of the EVE universe.
As for the two novels by Tony Gonzales, the short version of the advice is "No."
The long version, "NoooOooooOOooooo!"
http://nooooooooooooooo.com/
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I gather TBL is solid.
Otherwise? With due respect to CCP, I don't take anything from Tony G as canon without a secondary citation. The man literally could not keep straight which Caldari battleship was the new kid on the block-- a bit of canon that isn't exactly obscure (it's in the Raven and Scorpion item descs).
The melodrama that pervades his worldbuilding in an otherwise noir setting doesn't help my opinion one bit. The man was hired to write "Blade Runner," and came up with "Star Wars."
I know Hellgremlin thinks we're too hard on the guy, and I do sympathize with the plight of a writer faced with a deep, yet unfinished and changeable, canon, but the rest of the Eve PF has been pretty thematically consistent, making Tony G the outlier.
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A lot of what I don't like in TEA could have been fixed by subjecting the text to a person called an editor. Assumably the deadline (expansion going live) meant that CCP somehow managed to get MacMillan to act as a vanity press. However, some people do somehow like the novel. If you like Ruthless and Theodicy, you'll probably like The Empyrean Age.
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It's a game novel.
It's crap.
A lot of what I don't like in TEA could have been fixed by subjecting the text to a person called an editor.
I know a first time novelist who wrote a 80k cozy mystery. No build up, saturated market, no one thought it would make any sort of splash. Her agent has her do a full edit twice before submitting it to publishers, and the Random House editor she ended up with asked for another six.
It was one of those mysteries where there are recipes scattered throughout the book and the editor even made the various dishes to make sure that they were 1) easy enough to make 2) actually decent.
I once chatted with the game writer who'd written a novel for that IP. He wrote the novel in about five months and had a single full edit on it. ONE.
And it was his first novel too!
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The Burning Life is good, but more of a 'tour' of Eve than an actual deliberate story.
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It's a game novel.
It's crap.
Believe it or not, this does not necessarily have to be the case (though it is generally the rule). And accepting that all tie-in novels will be crap is part of what keeps the level of crap rather high.
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Tie-in novels are books for people who don't read anything but tie-in novels.
The authors and publishers don't need to raise their bar because they already have an audience that's willing to pay because it's Halo, or EVE, or Star Wars, or DnD. That audience is what keeps the crap level high.
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And this, I think, is why we need to hogtie and gag CCP's marketing division, so that they don't push pap for the sake of harvesting money. I swear...
(edit: and don't get me started about how they're using all the liveried ships for promotions, instead of giving us a way to build/acquire/fly liveried ships. ugh.)
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And this, I think, is why we need to hogtie and gag CCP's marketing division, so that they don't push pap for the sake of harvesting money. I swear...
Well, to be fair, when you go to FanFest and people say that TEA is the best book they've ever read, that doesn't really make them feel like they aren't serving their audience. This was not an uncommon occurrence in 2008-2009.
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Wait. Please tell me you aren't serious.
Please.
Dear god. These must be the troglodytes who don't actually bother reading, and so simply aren't literate enough to realize how filled with pap TEA is.
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Wait. Please tell me you aren't serious.
Please.
Dear god. These must be the troglodytes who don't actually bother reading, and so simply aren't literate enough to realize how filled with pap TEA is.
I am serious. I will refrain from making further judgements, but yes, I was rather surprised and saddened to hear such a thing.
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I must respectfully reject the idea that all video game tie-in fiction must be terrible... although I do admit that most officially published tie-in fiction is terrible. Horrifyingly, I've actually read a great deal of well-written fan-fiction (most notably Tiberium Wars (http://www.fanfiction.net/s/3654039/1/Tiberium-Wars), whose writer takes ques from both RL military memoirs and Warhammer 40k). This has convinced me that while the fiction itself is not necessarily at fault, game companies have a strange ability to pick up the uniquely unqualified writers to do much of their work.
So, with that said and done:
TEA - No. Just no. The Empyrean Age is a book that should not have been written (and definitely not read). You can learn all the most important (and painful) points from the community; there is no need to subject yourself to the actual book.
The Burning Life - As people have said, it's more a giant infodump than a true novel. It's... okay, I guess? It's no genius, but you do learn a lot about the universe and aren't left with the urge to repeatedly impact the nearest wall with your head.
Templar One - It's... well, I won't say it's as bad as TEA. That isn't to say it doesn't have its wallbanger moments, but they come at a less dramatically staccato rate. Those that do come are pretty bad, though - without :spoilers:, I'll say that one which really bugged me was a returning character from TEA being selected for something he shouldn't have been, while millions (if not billions) of other more suitable candidates were out there. This has entirely predictable results.
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[mod]Critical opinions of TEA are fine (and, as anyone who has shared virtually any channel with me for any length of time can tell you, my opinions on virtually every facet - from grammar to prose to plot - of that book start at loathing and head steeply downhill). Please don't let the thread get derailed into judgments about people who do enjoy it - that is not fine.[/mod]
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I must respectfully reject the idea that all video game tie-in fiction must be terrible... although I do admit that most officially published tie-in fiction is terrible. Horrifyingly, I've actually read a great deal of well-written fan-fiction (most notably Tiberium Wars (http://www.fanfiction.net/s/3654039/1/Tiberium-Wars), whose writer takes ques from both RL military memoirs and Warhammer 40k). This has convinced me that while the fiction itself is not necessarily at fault, game companies have a strange ability to pick up the uniquely unqualified writers to do much of their work.
the writer is http://forums.spacebattles.com/members/peptuck.29921/
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Fan-fiction is its own beast.
Silver, I am unsure if that was aimed at me, so I'll clarify.
I have opinions on games, books, movies, and films. I think some works are good, some are great, and some are of poor quality.
This is in no way a judgement of people who like or dislike those works. I am a fan of many works that I would consider to be of poor quality (much of my comic book and erotica collection), and there are a number of works I consider to be good (Kurt Vonnegut's output) that I dislike.
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TEA:
This was a dramatic attempt to completely re-direct the themes of the IP of EVE. It told a coherent enough story, and I give credit for that, but it did so being completely unaware of it's own setting. Sure, those who are hardcore loregeeks facepalmed like E.Honda as they trundled through the chapters, but the real misdirection of TEA was it's attempt to make Brand Icons out of faction leaders. This was accomplished mainly by packing the cluster with random and senseless 'conveniences', none of which actually made any of those Brand Icons relatable, respectable, enviable, or even villiafiable. Even Heth, the apparent Bastard in Chief of the story is little more than a passenger to the whims of ridiculous chance.
TBL:
This was a pure loredump. There are two storylines, one which must explore every single pirate faction in EVE, and another which must explore every empire faction in EVE. In each case, you get an amazing number of 'sitcom' contrivances; each phase of a story is simply setting up a situation where the characters can bail out and get to the next required location. Both stories end as though the book simply ran out of mandated locations to visit, and just dumped the characters on the sidewalk, with it's protagonists joining forces, manipulating the world, and blowing the minds of all the pirate faction leaders of New Eden with the scope of an Incredible Plan, only to piss it away at the last minute, leaving the reader with an incredible sense of "Wait, that's IT???"
Mind you, canon-wise, this thing is The Bible. I keep it on my desk for quick reference on all things EVE, and it's word on 'how things are' is damn near unquestionable. As such, I think it was actually quite worth my money, but I also realize I'm a very tiny portion of it's intended audience.
T1:
When I have enough money lying around that making mistakes for the fun of it becomes practical, maybe I'll pick this up. As it is, there doesn't seem to be anything in it's pages that I really need, and it's salient plot impacts are well understood through other avenues.
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TEA:
I actually liked it. Well parts of it anyway. Overall the story was kinda crap, but it did have some moments I liked, and the few infodumps on things like the cleaner bombs were interesting.
TBL:
As Grea said it was pretty much an infodump, and I liked it for that reason. Story wasn't that great, but it was better than TEA.
T1:
I've read it, but nothing really stood out to me and I don't even remember that much of it. It had some great moments with Mordu and Ishukone, but beyond that I think I may have forgotten everything else in it.
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Just the memory of TEA made me have to forcibly spend 2 minutes clicking non stop on the "nooooo" button. :SS
The rest of the novels came out when I was away, so I never got to read them. But TEA surely took all interest in doing so away, in any case.
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Fan-fiction is its own beast.
Silver, I am unsure if that was aimed at me, so I'll clarify.
I have opinions on games, books, movies, and films. I think some works are good, some are great, and some are of poor quality.
This is in no way a judgement of people who like or dislike those works. I am a fan of many works that I would consider to be of poor quality (much of my comic book and erotica collection), and there are a number of works I consider to be good (Kurt Vonnegut's output) that I dislike.
Not aimed at you, just based on past experience with these types of threads (and I've been guilty of it myself, on occasion)
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TEA: Shit. Brutally destroys original PF, storywise a very misogynistic sci-fi shithouse reader. Entertaining the same way as Street Fighter The Movie with JCVD.
TBL: Shit as a book. The story is just fucking boring and trite as shit. As an infodump creating PF, superb source material, mostly. Angels are lead by a hermit witch from a magical asteroid
T1: Decided not to even touch it after I saw who wrote it.
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TEA: Shit. Brutally destroys original PF, storywise a very misogynistic sci-fi shithouse reader. Entertaining the same way as Street Fighter The Movie with JCVD.
TBL: Shit as a book. The story is just fucking boring and trite as shit. As an infodump creating PF, superb source material, mostly. Angels are lead by a hermit witch from a magical asteroid
T1: Decided not to even touch it after I saw who wrote it.
Sums it up for me. TBL was bearable but some of the PF stuff did make me :psyccp:
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TBL felt like a bunch a chronicles loosely stitched together.
When the two protagonists meet, the story fell apart for me and seemed to rush towards an(y) ending just for the author to get done.
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have a question whichs kinda fits here (Am sure mods will move it to its own theard if it doesnt) And that is
Battle of pikes landing... Did it happen icly
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Did it happen? Yes.
Do we know it happened? I can't remember if we do actually.
Everything in the books, for better or worse, canonically happened, but some of it is 'omniscient knowledge' outside of a small circle, that is to say your character, not being the narrator or reader, should not know those things.
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Massive battle in the middile of Amamake?
Itll be in the rumor mills if nothing else tbh, Shame they didnt write in a PL hotdrop or something :P
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One of the most jarring things to date is the general glossing over of Outer Region capsuleer achievements, and the impact of Facwar/Capsuleer piracy on the low security systems and their populations.
Hopefully this will change when the True Stories series comes to light; I am fine with us being segregated from the cluster at large by dint of being capsuleers, but I'd still like to see our effects on 'the other side' beyond 'hero worship and demonising'.