LoreQuest: Four Books You’ll Love If You Love Mass Effect

LoreQuest: Four Books You’ll Love If You Love Mass Effect

Oh, Mass Effect, my problematic love.

As an entirely new audience discovers the joy of the original trilogy via the Legendary Edition, I’ve been thinking about what drew me back to the series again and again. Sometimes when we talk about this series, it’s easier to focus on what we don’t love about it. As Kael’s Diary of a Hardline Shep points out, Commander Shepherd’s “extrajudicial space cop” status sure hits different in this decade. It’s worth thinking critically about why even Shepherd’s diplomatic duties typically involve guns. It’s certainly worth thinking critically about how (and why??) sexual dimorphism in aliens is represented—not to mention human and alien sexuality, and the mysteriously limited romantic options for a gay male Shepherd. And as Zainabb said in last August’s roundtable, the pleasure of exploring the discoverable universe is interwound with the pleasure of controlling and/or colonizing it: the space cantinas are Shepherd’s to raid, the space crates are Shepherd’s to loot, and the Krogan coming-of-age ceremony is simply waiting for Shepherd to crash. (more…)

LoreQuest: Four Books You’ll Love If You Love Mass Effect

LoreQuest: Three Fantasy Novels that Dungeon Delvers Will Love

Imagine you are exploring the sun-bleached halls of a ruin—well, ruin might be a strong word, because these halls have a classical beauty that captivates your imagination—but to the best of your knowledge, you are the only living person who roams them. You amble through high-ceilinged galleries and collect seaweed from the flooded lower chambers. You catch a fish. You find a skeleton that has been laid out in a ceremonial tableau, and you contemplate who she was and what kind of culture lay her to rest.

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