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[Silver Night]

[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]

[kul Shaishi]

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, 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/

[Makkal]

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.

[Graelyn]

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.

[Ember Vykos]

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.

[Sepherim]

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.

[Silver Night]

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)

[Vincent Pryce]

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.

[DeadRow]

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 

[Myyona]

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.

[Dame Death]

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

[Aelisha Montenagre]

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. 

[Dame Death]

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

[Aelisha Montenagre]

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'.