Bruce Von Stiers
The third novel in the StarCraft series was written by Tracy Hickman. He is the author of the Dragonlance series. This latest novel in the series is titled StarCraft Speed of Darkness. It was published by Pocket Books.
For those of you who aren’t familiar with StarCraft, it is a computer game the features a whole bunch of different races trying to rule the universe. It was such an extremely popular game that it spawned not only one novel, but a second and now a third.
Ardo Melnikov is a young man who sees his girlfriend taken by the Zergs, supposedly she’s dead. Now Ardo joins the Marines. He’s gonna kick some butt and kill a whole bunch of Zerg.
The first part of the book details training that Ardo undergoes in his quest to become a great soldier. He interacts with a woman officer, Lieutenant Breanne and a tough soldier named Littlefield.
When Ardo begins his tenure as a Marine, he encounters a woman named Meredith. She says that she holds the key to some things that the Confederation would rather not let its soldiers know about. She keeps dropping hints to Ardo, but won’t exactly let him know what’s really going on.
The book details the battles that the Terran Confederacy has to endure to save a planet from being overrun by the dreaded Zerg. Ardo and his fellow Marines have to fight a lot of the Zergs and brave some horrendous circumstances.
There was a lot more profanity in this book than in the two previous StarCraft novels. I guess that the author wanted to somewhat accurately portray what a Marine might act like. It really didn’t enhance the story at all, it just made the characters seem a little too cliché at times.
Speed of Darkness is a tale of a man becoming all he could be in his quest to avenge the death of a loved one. For Ardo, becoming a Marine and killing all the Zergs in the universe would not even come close to losing his girlfriend. But squishing a few thousand of them sure wouldn’t hurt.
The book is not too bad. I would have liked to see a little more of a plot twist with Meredith, but it wouldn’t have really fit with the rest of the story.
StarCraft Speed of Darkness can be found at most major book retailers. It can also be ordered online from Pocket Books at www.simonsays.com or Blizzard at www.blizzard.com.