Cover of Mass Effect: Deception

Over the weekend I read Mass Effect: Deception, by William C. Dietz, in preparation for the release of Mass Effect 3.  Thanks to blogs like Joystiq I was aware of the “Errors with Mass Effect: Deception” Google Doc (which contains a list of errors compiled by fans of the games/comics) but figured that most of the complaints other people had would pass me by — after all, I’m not an expert on Krogan biology or fictional future history.

…I was wrong.

I was able to forgive the minor errors in the lore (since I wouldn’t have picked up on them without the document), but there were much bigger problems: one character’s name changed from Nankin to Narkin in the space of three pages; Gillian Grayson’s autism is dismissed as her being simply an “awkward teenager”; there are lots of events that don’t fit in with the events of previous books; and literally hundreds of grammatical errors (one page describes the difference between “an Level 1″, “an Level 2″ and “an Level 3″ biotic).

The overall story is kind of interesting, and I’m sure that some of the events that take place will feature in the next game, but that’s not a good enough reason for me to recommend the book to anybody.  It is, in short, rubbish.