Fuck Mass Effect Retribution.
Okay, the first two Mass Effect novels? I'm not going to say they were great art, not like Project Gutenberg's knocking on Bioware's door or anything, but defendable? Yeah, that's a pretty good one. Defendable.
But Mass Effect Retribution? Fuck this book. This book is, like, actively bad. It was so bad that I started checking my copy against the Mass Effect wiki, because I was sure I had downloaded a draft somehow. I'm almost mad that I had to read it, but who would I get mad at? You guys? I could never get mad at you guys.
Okay, so fuckin'a, let's start this shit: the novel opens with The Illusive Man sitting around drinking some Jim Beam. That's how you know he's the bad guy, he drinks Tennessee swill water instead of something decent like Maker's or Woodford. After summarizing Mass Effect 2 for us, he calls up Cerberus' top wet agent, Kai Leng.
Can we stop and talk about Kai Leng for a moment? As much as I hate Mass Effect Retribution, that's how much I love Kai Leng.
I fucking said it, come at me. I'm the only ass on the Internet that loves Kai Leng.
My love is an ironic love, but it runs so deep and so ironic that it switches around to an authentic love of how totally shitty Kai Leng is.
Kai Leng is supposed to be Shepard's dramatic foil. I know that because I was told that. I've got, like, zero narrative evidence to back that one up, so just take that as it is.
I frequently like to imagine the board meeting where they dreamed up Kai Leng:
Casey Hudson is the project manager for Mass Effect, in short, he's supposed to make sure all this horse shit goes according to plan. You see him doing a lot of the advertising. We already know Poet Laurate Mac Walters, so let us skip then to Drew Karpyshyn, the original head writer for Mass Effect. As I understand, and I could be wrong, but Mr. Karpyshyn wrote ME1, helped on ME2, and then ducked out, leaving Mass Effect 3 in the gentle, trusting hands of Mac Walters. There's people who think that Mass Effect would have been better off with Karpyshyn in the lead, but Drew Karpyshyn wrote Retribution, so he's currently on my shit list.
You're going to hate me when you GIS those three gentlemen and realize that they resemble their MSPainted avatars.
See, here's the thing: I can bitch about Hudson, Walters and Karpyshyn all I want, but I just don't think we should allow David Gaider (lead writer on Dragon Age) to live down the fact that he said Twilight was a good story. THE MAN IS A WRITER.
Anyway, as such, to emulate all the animus that the kids today seem to like, they made Kai Leng half Russian, half Chinese, and gave him a katana. "Hey, Bean, isn't that incredibly racist?" you may ask. Yes! Yes it is. Here, let me make it better, this is an actual factual in-game render of Kai Leng:
"Hey Bean, isn't it incredibly racist to give the Asian guy a face mask with slanty eyes?" you may ask. Yes! You're starting to see why I love Kai Leng! Trust me, the bad will grow from here. By the way, it would only look six thousand times more racist if I tried to draw that mas in MSPaint, so I'm not doing it. He'll be unmaksed in MSPixel and we'll all learn to deal with it.
Okay, keep Kai Leng in your back pocket, we'll return to him later. Didn't Brother Tim say that Paul Grayson now lives on Omega? He does! He's working there now, for Aria, while he fucks her daughter Liselle. I have no idea why Liselle didn't come up in the games. Aria looks good for a 600 year old lady who's had a kid.
Kai Leng goes to Omega, kills Liselle, and captures Grayson. Paul manages to send a pre-recorded message to our old friend Kahlee Sanders: I've been captured, don't come after me, get the fuck out of Dodge.
Brother Tim is, as always, totally cordial.
He's got Paul strapped down to a chair. He shocks Paul to indoctrinate him, ala the collectors. (He's got the know-how because Shepard brought it to him in Mass Effect 2. I guess the books assume that Shepard handed over the base?) He manages to knock Paul out, though, so Kai Leng stands guard.
Meanwhile, Anderson's busy hating life as a space senator. He gets a voice mail to meet Kahlee at the place where Mass Effect: Revelation ended. Remember that place? Grassy? Pond?
Oh man! Oh boy! I've only been waiting forever for this! I bet their reunion's going to be all steamy and shit --
... the fuck, are they just ... waving at each other?
That's ... um, impotent.
Anderson takes Kahlee to another space senator, Orinia, to ask for help. Orinia's a turian, I'm not sure why she'd give a shit, but there it is.
Meanwhile, Paul ain't doin' so swift.
He's kind of sort of not yet a husk. You know, if there was one reason to read Retribution, it would be the descriptions of what indoctrination feels like. The book goes into it in quite a bit of depth. Paul's just in the beginning stages here, so he says it's just like whispers right now. Brother Tim doesn't think he's getting indoctrinated fast enough, so Kai Leng kicks Paul's ass, and Tim dopes him with red sand to speed everything along.
Meanwhile, Orinia has decided that she'll help Kahlee if Kahlee analyzes data for her, because Kahlee's like the galaxy's top data analyst now. In the first book she was an AI expert, in the second she was all up in biomedical something or other, but no, you guys, she's now a data analyst. Sure.
I swear to hell it's like a hundred pages of her analyzing data. How do you even make that entertaining? You don't.
I got bored and drew Kahlee stabbing a dinosaur.
After all that HOT HOT DATA action, she presents her findings in a board meeting.
WHY IS THIS IN MY SCIENCE FICTION ACTION NOVEL. WHY.
Since I know you're wondering, Anderson is in like 0% of this part.
You know, I give David Gaider shit, but right now I'm kind of wanting something written by literally anyone else on the planet.
Somehow, Kahlee has analyzed data in such a way that she convinces the turians to go kill Cerberus guys. Thank you Jesus, because now stuff gets to happen.
In one of the most hilarious things I've ever read, we then switch to Kai Leng exercising. He does "a final set of fifty pushups" before toweling off his torso (are you swooning yet) and dialing the gravity back from "200% to one standard G." Look, Bioware, I know his face model is like roaringly hot, but come the hell on.
So anyway, just then, Cerberus' station is attacked by all those turians dazzled by Kahlee's data analysis skills. Kai Leng towels off again and has to choose between saving Tim and killing Paul, who gets loose in the attack. He saves Tim, but now Grayson's just careening off in the wild, oops.
The turians take care of that. They capture Paul. However, the reapers grab hold, tell Paul to kill all the turians, then shove them out the air lock. Paul has his own shuttle now, hooray!
Kahlee's off running on a treadmill somewhere on the Citadel. Anderson comes in to see her and she totally forgets to towel off her torso. Actually, that's a cogent thing to bring up, because it makes for the most awkward scene in literary history where Anderson sort of touches her, and he gets a little sweat on him, and everyone gets all weird?
Anyway, he brings good news that the station attack was successful, even though Tim's alive and Paul's out joyriding in a turian shuttle.
There's this weird tension where Anderson's sort of not jealous of how Kahlee doesn't want to fuck Paul? It's really cray.
So anyway, Orinia wants Kahlee to go check out Grayson because ... uh ... ______. I think the book says she can "data analyze like a human." Or maybe it's because she was doing biometical shit in the last book? Anderson rage quits his post as a space senator because _______ and goes with her.
At Cerberus station, Kahlee notices that Paul's charts look like the data Dr. Quon was pulling. Anderson explains what reapers are, Kahlee hasn't heard of them, something about the council covering up the battle of the Citadel, so on.
Meanwhile, Paul's trying to decide where to take his sweet new ride.
Then, literally out of nowhere:
... what. Just, random, "damn, gonna tap me some blonde lady!" How hot IS this woman? I guess no one can resist a hot hot data analyst? Anyway, he careens off toward her.
TIM calls Aria for some reason and convinces her to go after Kahlee because fuck it I don't care. I'm not even really sure why Aria's in this book to be honest.
Anderson's supposed to be asleep on Cerberus station, because, uh, ____, but instead he's up late. Suddenly, the station is under attack! Shit! He runs into the hallway:
Yeah, by the way, he's like ass naked. Mass Effect. I understand that you woke up this morning hoping to not see fifty year old bright orange cock and balls, so please enjoy the censor bar through this section.
Anyway, Aria's krogans come running at him.
They take Kahlee, and decide to take Anderson too because, uh, ____. This kills me, it would have been so much easier to toss him out an air lock. The krogans knock Kahlee and Anderson out.
This next scene, children.
This next scene.
Like, imagine me for a moment, sitting on my couch, reading this on my iPad.
Then, I read this scene.
This is what happens next.
Anderson wakes up ass naked, because Mass Effect. Aria's goons have put him in a really nice room on Omega.
Kahlee's there too. Also ass naked.
Oh, and also the goons have provided a couch and a full bar. I think there was a fire place too? I don't know, I was too busy flipping the FUCKING COUCH because are you SERIOUSLY SHITTING ME.
HEY EVERYBODY DING DING DING DING HONK HONK LOOK AT THAT THE MACK TRUCK OF FUCKING SUBTLETY JUST DROVE THROUGH THIS SCENE. ARE THEY GOING TO FUCK?! I DON'T KNOW! GEE WHIZ WHAT OTHER MYSTERIES DOES THIS FUCKING UNIVERSE HOLD OH MY GOD FUCK ALL OF THE LIVING THINGS.
I mean ... okay, this book is having to work off the sexual tension built up in Revelation, I get that. There's no way you could expect a reader to read Revelation, pick this book up, see Anderson and Kahlee in the same novel, and not wonder, "Gee, will they fuck this time?" But this novel has this weird habit of either totally not addressing it (and instead analyzing data for six hundred pages) or throwing them in some sort of 1970s fuck den. There's just ... there just has to be another way to write a romance subplot!
If you hadn't have ever read Revelation, this scene would have smacked you in the teeth, too. Just, nothing, nothing, nothing, fuck den. I have no idea why you'd read Retribution before Revelation, but it's possible!
Holy shit, compared to Twilight, David Gaider might have been on to something.
Anyway, they get dressed because ours is a merciful Lord, and then they sit on the couch and drink brandy because why the hell wouldn't you.
~and then they almost kiss~
Aria wants to know where Paul is, Kahlee doesn't know but pretends she does and this somehow ~protects Anderson.~ Aria leaves them in the fuck den while she does Aria shit. Somehow, Kahlee's fingers had been broken, so there's lots of ~those sorts of scenes~ where Anderson ~takes care of her~ by doing ~hand rehabilitation~ which is just really hand holding on the couch. In the fuck den. Wouldn't two actual adults have fucked by now?
So anyway, Aria comes back into the fuck den and is like, "Get in losers, we're going to go see Paul, he's at the docks." Meanwhile, Kai Leng has set up surveillance shit on Omega so he can watch this shit go down while he towels off. He even keeps a can nearby so he can piss and not be too far from his monitor.
If you have a problem with Kai Leng pissing in stuff, we're going to have a bumpy road ahead of us.
They all meet up at a warehouse, everyone tries to beat the shit out of everyone else. Kahlee and Anderson manage to run away, only to run smack into Kai Leng, who is currently toweling off. Anderson tries to punch Kai Leng in the crotch (really), but it doesn't work, so Kai Leng takes them to the place where his personal shuttle is docked so that they can all chase after Paul Grayson.
It's in this docking bay guarded by some turians. Okay, I read this part like three times, and I still don't get it. Like, there's a barrier they have to climb over to get into the docking bay? I think? And Kahlee can't climb because her hand's busted? So Anderson and the guard start to help her over.
But then, Anderson ... throws Kahlee at the guard? I think that's what happens.
I have no idea why she doesn't kick his ass right there. But Anderson manages to steal the stun gun off the guard and drops Kai Leng. They stuff Kai Leng into the shuttle and drive off.
Paul goes to Grissom Academy. It's implied that the reapers want something there, but don't expect that plot thread to resolve. Kahlee and Anderson land at Grissom, tie Kai Leng up, towel him off, and run after Paul. Kahlee gets all the kids into the cafeteria to keep them safe, then promptly gets captured by Paul, who's now 100% reaper by the way.
Kai Leng escapes, towels off, and darts into the academy. Do you remember Nick, from the last book? Of course you don't, no one gives a raw blue fuck about Nick, but he's back, and he escapes the cafeteria and runs smack into Kai Leng. Kai Leng realizes that Nick is biotic and talks him into zapping Paul.
Oh, whoops, and he also hits Kahlee.
After a fight scene, Nick gets shot, Kai Leng towels off and escapes, and Kahlee and Anderson are left to deal with the aftermath.
In the hospital, Anderson rolls up on Kahlee, and Nick gets all pissy because he's got a crush on her. Hot hot data analysis.
Anyway, Anderson wants Kahlee to come with him and study Paul's dead body. What does she do?
Aww. That would almost be sweet if this book wasn't such a fucking pile.
I'd like to point out that this novel had exactly zero mass effects and zero retribution. Horse Anus Splelunking Adventures: Princess Edition would have been a better title
Anyway, such is the end of the Mass Effect novels. Sadly, even though she kisses him at the end, we don't ever really get a satisfactory answer as to what happens to Kahlee and Anderson. Maybe they'll do that one in Mass Effect 3? I don't think Kahlee comes up in the comics.
Sadly, since we're out of novels, I guess next time we'll be doing --
-- wait, what did I just find on my iPad?
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