CoH/CoV Novel?

I was in the bookstore yesterday and saw fiction books for Starcraft 2 and Star Trek Online MMORPG. As I glanced through the books I was jealous of some of the topics. In the Starcraft 2: Heaven's Devils, the book explores the relationship between Jim Raynor and Tychus Findlay when they were younger. Other Starcraft titles included I, Mengsk and Twilight. In STO: The Needs of the Many, the novel centers on a conflict between the Federation and Species 8472. Has anyone read these novels and wants to comment on their worth?

Does City of Heroes have any published fiction books? I've read the comics so please don't mention them.

There are two City of Heroes novels, The Web of Arachnos, by Robert Weinberg, and The Freedom Phalanx, by Robin D. Laws. A third book, The Rikti War, was tentatively planned but never released.

The first book takes place in the early 1930's and deals with Marcus Cole and Stefan Ricther's discovery of the Well of the Furies, followed by the emergence of the first modern heroes and villains. It's also notable for featuring that "Brass Monday" event that you sometimes hear mentioned on these fora, a Nemesis invasion of Paragon City. The thing I found most interesting about this book was that it actually sort of works as a historical novel. Weinberg makes some effort to suggest the milieu of the early '30's.

The second book deals with the formation of the Freedom Phalanx in the '80's. There's somewhat less effort made in this one to tie it in to the in-game lore. I seem to remember Laws stating somewhere that "of course he had never heard of the game" when he was contracted to write it. I consider it the weaker of the two books (neither is great, though they aren't the worst tie-in novels ever, either), but it has some interesting scenes involving Statesman's attempts to deal with the death of his wife. (Cue one of the fora's self-appointed arbiters of characterization coming here to call this the worst writing ever in 4, 3, 2 ...)

For lore pedants, the novels are considered what I believe people call "secondary canon." That is, what they say is generally valid until the game contradicts it, which it may do at any time. A case in point is Ms. Liberty's first name (Jessica in the novel, Megan in the game).

It looks as if both books are available on on Amazon.

Edit: Say, I'm located in Columbia, too. Interesting.

Additional edit: Removed something about Robert Weinberg; I had confused him with Ray Winniger. Winniger has written some pulp-related stuff, while Weinberg is more a comics person. (I have some of his prose in the collection The Path of the Bold, and while the quality of the writing isn't terrible, I wasn't too impressed with his story. Incidentally, that collection is set in a world primarily designed by Jesse Scoble, better known on these fora as Arctic Sun and author of those old Paragon Times pieces.)

2 actually.

Web of Arachnos

and

The Freedom Phalanx


I've read the Web and thought it was an interesting read. Gives a good deal of backstory with States and Recluse, etc.
Haven't gotten around to the Phalanx yet.

Web of Arachnos is generally considered to be better, partly because Freedom Phalanx contradicts a bunch of stuff and makes a lot of the characters we all know and love act very differently than we have them in-game. Overall it's not a bad read at least once.

I don't know much about the novels myself, not much of one on reading, but I'm pretty sure CoH has some old book somewhere. I just leave the games to the games and anything beyond that is to much in my opinion. (( Not a big fan of the gaming conventions either... the geeky-ness is... scary. ))

And there was supposed to be a third (The Rikti War), but due to a fiasco with the publisher, that ended up never happening. Pity - though now with GOING ROGUE, this would be an ideal time for a new novel, especially one that deals with Primal and Praetorian Earth.

*grins*

There's also also a fairly good-sized chunk of fan fiction written for CoH, primarily here on the forums, some on FanFiction.net, if you're into the idea that it doesn't have to be official to be good.

Michelle
aka
Samu

I finished the Web of Arachnos last month and it was great. Reading about Statesman as a criminal and Stefan Richter as his sidekick was hilarious. The Well of Furies and the women/Furies were interesting too. I hope to see them in the game soon.

Monica Richter and how she got the Liberty Belt was somewhat interesting. I was unhappy with her being Stefan's sister and Cole's wife. My opinion changed about Recluse when I read he killed Cole's brother and his own father. The origins of the Darkwatcher were interesting, too.

I'm in the middle of the second book, the Freedom Phalanx. So far this book isn't anywhere near the first. Positron seems to be the focus of this story. When I read this I feel like I'm reading about a poor "Ironman." Reading about his suit practically puts me to sleep every time. If I read about search alogrithms, manual/auto mode one more time I think I might scream. Synapse seems to be a womanizer/socialite/playboy to me. In my mind, I thought Synapse would be a smart guy but he comes off as just a yahoo. Manticore is a straight loner and his obsession with Proteon concerns me greatly. He barely talks to Positron but how he scores/connects with Sister Psyche is a great mystery to me I hope to understand. Honestly, Sister Psyche to me seems to be the most interesting character in this story. Reading about her and her tremendous mental powers but her inability/lack of willpower in her personal life has captivated me greatly.

This book was/is hard for me to read until recently. I actually bought this book first but the first few chapters were so bad I almost gave up and put it down. I read the Web of Archanos quickly in about a week and have reacquired my determination to finish this book.

I give Cryptic credits for story development. When Star Trek Online fired up earlier this year, they released a novel called STO: Needs of the Many and it was quite interesting. Too bad Cryptic just doesn't know how to make good games. CoH has evolved tremendously under NCSoft/Paragon but STO under Cryptic will probably fail in 2011. Cryptic seems to believe that leading with the C-Store is Star Trek. On another board, I read someone making the comment that STO was Champions Online with Star Trek Skins :-)

FWIW, Resident, FREEDOM PHALANX had a lot of potential that really, unfortunately, went nowhere. I never did find out if Robin Laws actually PLAYS the game or not, but just for myself, it came across as a commissioned novel that was told to cover "X Y Z bases" and with "X Y Z" storylines.

It's a bit of self-promotion here, but if you hit my signature, I wrote a full length COH FanFic novel (told from Positron's PoV) that a lot of readers have really enjoyed, which then in turn started a sequel. I'd also recommend a quick foray into the Roleplaying section of the forums, and look up the writing by Mr_Grey, BlueBattler, and a couple of others who've done excellent fiction.

Cheers!

Michelle
aka
Samuraiko/Dark_Respite

3515: Positron Gets Some

Two questions:

1. How long is this arc?
2. How did you get such low MA numbers?

I finally finished the Freedom Phalanx today. What a read :-( This book was created to intro Positron clearly. This book was weird. None of the villains except for Recluse and Protean are in the Wiki. Bein, Carol Rossdale, and Revenant who are they? It's like they made up new stuff for this book. I'm glad this is over. I'm just so glad. Positron is now my least favorite character in all of CoH now. I happily move on to the fan fiction.

I visited and downloaded your Psi love story yesterday. It's 199 pages. To be able to write a good story you have to be well informed about the Universe. I'm not there yet but I'm getting closer.