Starcraft: Liberty’s Crusade | a Review
originally published on 24/07/2023;
Hello everyone, I am the crafty star-faring civilization, G.E.M.Simov, a whole 7-billion-in-1 human being in the vein of Horatio, here to tell you about Jeff Grubb’s book, “Starcraft: Liberty’s Crusade”.
Simple review details - I try to rank books on an out of 10 basis, granting up to 3 points in 3 categories, as well as a last, single point from my own self, depending on my experience with it.
Content
Right off the bat, I feel as though it is important to point out that this book is based on a video game. Not only that, it is important to point out that this book decides to retell part of the story told IN the game, if in a different manner that, surprisingly, decides to focus on concepts and explorations of said concepts, rather than the nitty and gritty of war.
Don’t get me wrong, ladies, gentlemen and N-bees, this book still does get into the nitty-gritty of war. In fact, the nitty-gritty of war is quite well portrayed in it, but it is combined with something else - the lack of nitty and gritty in relation to ‘the big guys’ who actually cause the war, and who keep the war going.
So let’s jump onto the topic itself - war - and let’s examine how it is explored in this book. I’d like to say that the way war is presented here is very interesting and very holistic, as it appears to be all-encompassing in its method. That, being said, could be considered tautological and pointless - there is no holistic means of looking at war, there are no varieties to it. It is just war.
And, indeed, this book shows war in that manner. War is just a large-scale fight between animals. In this case, the animals are humans. And what do animals fight over? Food and the chance to reproduce, meaning they fight over resources and over their own desires. Now, equating the genetically imposed need to reproduce to the desires of humans could be a bit underhanded, but it is, pretty much, the exact same thing.
As a result of that, every war is a war over either resources OR someone’s desires. In many cases it is both, because one desires resources, or one justifies a war out of want and desire through resources.
The war observable in this book is just that. There is the Confederacy of Man, which leads wars over resources - the border colonies, wanting better living conditions, instigate revolutions over their desires for said living conditions, or over a want for a different form of government. When such a revolt takes place, the planet in question stops providing resources to the Confederation of Man, and, thus, the Confederation wants its resources. Boom, war.
In addition to that, whenever the Confederation does that, leads and wins a civil war - crushing rebels - it accumulates another resource, which resource isn’t tangible, but it is a very real thing. It builds up the appearance of power, which fuels the understanding that rebellion or resistance is futile.
Not only that, but through these wars, the Confederacy obtains prisoners of war, who are then either executed, as a means of growing the Confederacy’s appearance of power, or they are forced to undergo neural re-socialization (essentially a lobotomy that makes them obedient), because they are dangerous convicts, and then they are turned into new soldiers for the Confederacy, which is a resource - manpower.
Thus, war for the Confederacy is depicted as being just that - “I want X,” says the Confederacy, and then it goes to war with whoever has X.
Then, there’s war for the Sons of Korhal. Originally, that was a rebellion, and it remained a rebellion. The war in question was a Civil War, with the Sons of Korhal wanting something, which something was greater autonomy for Korhal. Greater autonomy is, again, much like what the Confederacy wants, a resource. Having that means one can do more, having to go through less bureaucracy and being able to act far more independently.
However, that, for the Confederacy, would mean loss of access to resources, or a sudden leap in the price of resources. So that’s a big no-no, especially when going to war is such a good thing for the Confederacy, so it’s time for war.
The Sons of Korhal, then, following the Confederacy’s minor deed of nuking the planet of Korhal so hard it turned into a ball of inhospitable glass, changed their goal. They wanted to topple the Confederacy now, and toppling a government means installing a new government to replace it, obtaining all the resources that were at the disposal of the previous government. Thus, the Sons of Korhal ALSO fought for resources.
Naturally, the desire for freedom and autonomy, the want for a political change, are simultaneously not expressly resource-bound things, but they wind up being just that. Even if the war comes as a desire, everything that one has, every concept itself, which concept can be considered quantitatively, can be treated as a resource, so every single war is a resource war… Right?
That’s where the Zerg and the Protoss step in. While mankind, the Terrans, wage war over resources, the Zerg and the Protoss are far harder to figure out. On the one hand, the book makes an effort of leaving things ambiguous, as it follows the point of view of the Terrans themselves, at a point in history when very little was known about the pair of warring races. On the other, it is hinted that their reasons are slightly different from those of the Terrans.
Of course, they can be boiled down to being resource wars - in the case of the Zerg, they want to CONSUME everything and subjugate it, which is quite literally the accumulation of resources and their utilization; in the case of the Protoss, they want to eradicate the Zerg completely, which, too, can be treated as a resource, even if a bit abstract - but the interesting part is that there is something else, some unknowable-ness to the whole meme.
The Zerg are animals, and so they are not actually waging war, they are simply doing what animals do. But then the Zerg are being run by a hivemind, which hivemind is very intelligent, so there is some form of intelligence behind them, maybe even a form of reasoning.
Perhaps I am allowing my knowledge of the lore to interfere here, making me feel as though things are more in-depth than they are in the book, but the ambiguity presented is enough to warrant such considerations.
In any case, the important thing is that all war boils down to someone wanting something and going on to obtain it through the least reasonable, most animalistic manner possible. It indicates a faux advancement - be it technological, cultural or otherwise - as the only metric for the advancement of a civilization or a sentient, sapient species is how reasonably they operate.
War, as it is depicted in this book, and as it is in reality, is devoid of reason. It is something that only the insane engage in, for they lack the mental fortitude to solve their problems in a truly human manner, and, thus, decide to fight like animals.
But here’s where the distinction appears - war is not just fighting. As is shown in the book, war is destructive. In the case of the Confederacy, they destroy Korhal, with all its resources. No one can have it. Not only that, but the destruction of Korhal also affects tens of millions of people - of innocent, civilian people. Folks who were not involved with the rebellion.
In nature, there is no such thing. When a lion pride goes hunting, they nab one antilope or wildebeest and then go on to eat it for a week. The lion pride does not murder as many wildebeests as possible, leaving carcasess here and there. There is reason in nature, in the fights between animals. There is no reason in war.
The Sons of Korhal do just that, too. They render planets, with their resources and their populations, obsolete. They bring about the destruction of said planets, as if they were saying: “If I can’t have it, no one can!”
The Zerg and the Protoss operate in a slightly different manner, but their approaches are essentially the same. A planet fully claimed by the Zerg is unusable by any other faction, and it is as though it was already destroyed. A planet claimed by the Zerg, but not fully commandeered by them, is seen as unsalvageable, in most cases, by the Protoss. The Protoss, then, go on to destroy the planet. Death to the enemy at all cost.
War, in this book, is well depicted. It is perceived through a cynical lens, and it is perceived as a totally pointless thing - almost, at least. After all, when the war is ‘over’, it turns out that one bad thing was simply replaced by another, and the only thing that truly happened was that a monstrous number of human lives was lost. But, hey, that’s a win, isn’t it? We won the war!
Another good thing that this book does is depict the destruction brought by war, although I suppose it could have been slightly more expanded. In fact, the whole book has that feeling to it - as though things are happening a tad too fast, as though there is not enough slow-down time for one to consider things. Seems to hurt these quieter, more profound moments of contemplation.
Characters seeing their homes irreversibly destroyed, seeing the life of what was once alive ripped from it, seeing things that might have appeared unshakably stable toppling to the ground - those sights, as well as the effects they have on people. On the little people, the ordinary folks - that’s who gets affected.
The big man in the command chair does not care. For that fellow, as is in very single case, the soldiers are not human beings, they are units in a game. For that fellow, the battlefields are just that - battlefields, not the homes of human beings. For that fellow, the enemy is just that - the enemy, irreversibly evil - and there’s no chance of negotiation and reasoning.
But the ordinary person, the man in the street, as they can be called, this is what war brings. It is bad. War is bad by default, war is bad fundamentally, conceptually, ontologically. If one thing can have a qualitative judgment made about it, war is that one thing, and that judgment is that it is bad. It is EVIL, in fact, because it is exclusively selfish.
In the book, that is perfectly portrayed. The big man in the chair - he does not want to make the world a better place, he just wants it for himself, whether that big man be a Protoss, a Terran or a Zerg. And how would that be called? Selfish, greedy - all the possible descriptors ought to be slapped on. And how does one achieve that? Through war. Thus, it is incredibly easy and perfectly appropriate to regard war as evil, even in the context of this book, even outside of it.
But is there something else that is explored, conceptually, aside from war in this book? Why, of course there is. It is surprising, frankly, just how interestingly political this read is, without being overtly political. It manages to almost effortlessly portray all sides as dark gray, rather than black or white, thus making it obvious to the reader that the characters are forced to make a choice between two evils, one that is maybe lesser, one that is maybe greater, but, ultimately, no great change will come of it.
It speaks to the futility of engaging in politics and trying to fit into a system. For, after all, the Sons of Korhal simply want to be the ones controlling the system, and they crave to run the system in a different, albeit barely, manner. Even if you elect the red president because the blue one is not doing what you want, you know that the red president is also not going to do what you want. He will not change the system, because he is bound by the system, he operates according to its rules and, most important of all, he benefits from the system.
Then there’s the focus on the FOURTH power. You know, the three powers - Legislative, Judicial and Executive - and their illegitimate brother that’s supposed to keep them in check, the Press. News. Journalism. That amalgamation of stuff. There’s a very neat focus on the Press, on how it works and what it does, on how it shapes the public subconscious, or at least has a very big impact on it, and on how the Press is very prone to being controlled.
I was a wee young lad when I read this book first, and I think this was the most important thing that I learned from it. The Press is monstrously powerful and malleable. It, as long as owned by someone, will always move in accordance with its owner’s wishes. Biases are obviously going to show up. Propaganda will be very nicely displayed.
I’d like to say I’ve had a critical eye ever since then, though that could be in conjunction with the perfect lesson to not believe everything you read online. It’s immaculate, especially when considering the fact it is portrayed here. The little guy, the journalist, is doing his best to do journalism. To find the truth and share it with everyone else. Unfortunately, the big guy in the big chair leading the charade has INTERESTS. He benefits from X and Y, and, thus, if some uncomfortable truths show up, the big guy in the chair just makes these truths disappear, or alters them so that they are not uncomfortable.
Of course, they stop being truths then, but who cares? Definitely not the ones in charge. They actually like it when the truth is obscured, do they not? Makes it easier to do whatever it is they’re doing, be it human experiments or xenomorph experiments (the latter of which threaten entire planets, but who cares about that when there’s profit to be made, or when there’s a potential source of resources to exploit?), right?
It could just be my interpretation, now that I sit down and think about it, but this book is a very good advertisement for democracy… Well, maybe not, but it’s a good denunciation of despotism and oligarchy (by the way, every single representative democracy is an oligarchy, cry about it). Not only that, but it seems to be a thinly veiled denunciation of the system currently in place (I’ll let you guess what I’m talking about, it starts with ‘Capital-’ and ends with ‘-ism’).
This book is surprisingly rich in content, mainly due to the way it is written and presented, as previously stated. I feel as though I could keep on going, I could talk about the way it examines people in different situations and how those people react to these situations, I could talk about how the book examines trauma, the people affected by it and the way those people deal with trauma, as well as how it meddles with their interaction with other people, I could talk about how the book ponders the ways people deceive others and manipulate them, how they lie to their own selves and flood themselves with grand delusions in order to convince themselves that they are not conducting Evils, but, rather, making sacrifices. Necessary, by their own assessment, sacrifices.
But if I were to do so, I risk making this review long. Very, very long, and I also risk splattering far too much praise on this book… Though I feel as though it deserves it. It could have done a lot more, I feel, but what it has done is a lot more than what most books in the genre do. 2/3
Richness of Expression
I read a translated version of this book, and my OH my, this was one of the worst, or rather sloppiest, translations I’ve seen in a while. Some things were not translated at all - in fact, they were not even transliterated, they were just written out as they were in english. Others were simply transliterated, even if a translation was possible and even very applicable. Then, there were also things that were just PLAINLY translated WRONGLY.
Example 1 - the book’s title is: “Liberty’s Crusade”, but it was translated as: “The War of Liberty”
Example 2 - the title of one character is: “The Queen of Blades”, but it was translated as: “The Queen of Knives”
Those are the most massive examples, but then there’s other stuff that bothers me greatly. The way the book’s cover is styled. It is in all caps, and so for the original, one thinks that this is the crusade of liberty - liberty the concept. For the translated version, one scratches their head (as the word ‘liberty’ is transliterated and there is no word with that collection of letters in that order in the translated language), thinking to themselves that the translators shit the bed.
THEN, of course, it turns out that Liberty is the surname of the main character, but you wouldn’t be able to tell that it’s all about that Liberty fellow, rather than the concept of liberty, unless you look at the back of the book. But, hey, seeing such a monstrous error in translation on the front of the book would make me immediately disregard it. Fortunately, when I bought it, I was a child and I had no sense for quality.
Either way, with the facts that the translation was bad and stylization of the cover was wonky out of the way, I’ll get on with the manner of expression.
In short - it was good. This was a very readable book. I found myself very pleased with the wordplay of the author whenever there were things to be described, for it appeared to me as though he was doing a very good job at it. I’ve no great complaints to lodge at it, as some words were very unusual and even never-before seen by yours truly.
If anything, a book needs to be primarily readable, and that, then, exemplifies how rich the expression of the writer was. 3/3
Story
As previously mentioned, the story of this book is taken from the game “Starcraft”. It is a retelling of the first (of three) campaigns in the game, which campaign focuses on the Terran faction (the humans), the civil war raging within the human controlled sectors of space and the first encounters of humanity with the Protoss and Zerg alien races.
By merit of it being Starcraft’s story, the story is automatically good, because Starcraft’s story is impressively compelling and surprisingly well told, for such an old game. However, how is it differentiated? Is the story told exactly as it is told in the game? Simultaneously yes and no. A lot of the events that occur in the game, in what is called ‘the briefing room’, before the start of a mission, occur in this book as well, in a situation similar to ‘the briefing room’, and then the events that take place outside of ‘the briefing room’ also take place in a similar manner to the way they do in the game…
However, there’s a catch. There’s a reporter. The story spins around Michael Liberty, a reporter from UNN (Universal News Network) who’s in a bit of trouble for doing a big report that almost incriminates some of the big families on Tarsonis. As a result of that, his boss offers him to go take a job off-planet, so that things can quiet down and so that there can be no great threat for his life.
Mike agrees, whilst being given quite a few neat bonuses as a means of getting him to do this, and off he goes. Three months later, having spent them on board the Norad II, a battle-cruiser of the Confederacy, Mike’s so far monotonous days are shaken up when something happens.
Edmund Duke, the commander of the Norad II, informs Mike that alien contact has been established, and the ship arrives in the Sara system - where one of the two inhabited planets has been thoroughly destroyed by said aliens. Mike, whose time being a war-reporter was just about to come to an end, is surprised by the sudden extension of his term, and by the incredible news.
Landing on the other planet - Mar Sara - Mike starts snooping around, because the information Duke had was a lot more than one ought to have following first contact. There, he encounters Sarah Kerrigan, who gives him some interesting info, and he follows the leads to an abandoned base - Enthum - where he encounters something else entirely. Another xenomorph life-form, which takes the life of his de facto bodyguard, and almost gets him killed… If not for the timely intervention of James Raynor.
The pair get going together, and Mike learns some more stuff from Jimmy, such as the fact that these funky aliens are called the Zerg (while the other ones who had destroyed the other colonized planet are called the Protoss). Then, Jimmy and his boys find a command center that’s been commandeered by the Zerg, so they destroy it, but that nets them a one-way ticket to jail, on orders of Edmund Duke.
Liberty, a bit upset by that, starts looking for a way to get back to the Norad II, so he can do something about it, but gets intercepted by Sarah Kerrigan, who takes him to a special location wherein he meets her boss - Arcturus Mengsk, leader of the Sons of Korhal, a terrorist organization working to topple the Confederacy of Man.
Mengsk manages to convince Mike to do some work for him, in exchange for help with freeing Jimmy and his boys, and when that’s done, Mengsk gets Raynor to do a job for him, which involves recovering sensitive data from a military base. All the while, the Zerg are spreading over Mar Sara and killing civilians left and right.
Mike and Jimmy manage to retrieve the data, finding out that the Confederacy had known about the Zerg way earlier than was let on, and that they are the reason there are Zergs on the planet in the first place. As they escape, they watch the Protoss show up once again to destroy the planet and cleanse it of the Zerg.
Following that, time becomes very muddy. Things happen, but how much time passes between each event is unknown. It could be days, weeks, even months. Apparently, the Sons of Korhal operate for 9 years before achieving their goal, so it could even be years, who knows! That’s a bit of a problem, but I’ll get to that later.
Mike, Kerrigan and Raynor become colleagues, and over the course of a few jobs given out by Mengsk, grow into friends. They test out a Psionic Emitter, which attracts the Zerg, on a planet already claimed by the ruthless aliens, as an attempt to break out of a blockade of said planet by the Confederacy. They succeed, attracting every Zerg in a radius of twenty five light years. The planet is, however, condemned to destruction, as the Protoss soon follow to cleanse the Zerg.
Finally, the Sons of Korhal reach Tarsonis, the seat of power of the Confederacy, and do battle. Things seem to be a bit too even, so Mengsk dispatches a multitude of Psionic Emitters to bring the Zerg TO Tarsonis (which was, so far, Zerg free) as a means of winning the fight. Unfortunately for him, the Protoss arrive a bit too early and engage the Zerg ON THE PLANET, rather than destroying it, which means the forces of the Confederacy can get away.
Mike and Raynor are, by now, disillusioned and disgusted by his actions, but Kerrigan, who owes Mengsk her life and soul, is still willing to follow his orders, and she gets sent to fight the Protoss as a means of slowing them down and allowing the Zerg to slaughter the Confederates. Mike and Jimmy mutiny, commandeering a vessel and trying to save Kerrigan, while Mengsk abandons everyone on the planet and pulls back the rebel forces.
Unfortunately, they do not succeed.
The book ends with a now-changed Kerrigan, mutated by the Zerg into a new life-form, watching Liberty’s retelling of the war, which retelling exposes Mengsk’s inhuman crimes against humanity.
The story is told in an impressively compelling manner, though there are some strange stylistic choices. As an example, the first chapter, and the last chapter, are both very short - around 4-ish pages long - and they depict a holographic report presented by Mike of the events of the war, done after-the-fact. Then, every chapter between them is told from the perspective of Mike Liberty, in the third person, whilst also starting off with a page-long monologue in relation to the events of the chapter told by Mike Liberty’s holographic form that’s making its report.
It’s also made stranger by the fact that the chapters are not totally consecutive, with there being no seamless flow from one chapter into another. There is always a period of time that passes between the end of a chapter and the beginning of the next, giving the story a very episodic feeling, as though it attempts to replicate the feeling provided by the game, or maybe it attempts to replicate the way stories in a news journal are told - one per week or day, with there existing a necessity for them to be self-sufficient, at least to a degree.
Either way, that might be the only aspect of the story that I did not really like. Everything else about the story was very good. Michael Liberty was a neat main character, whose antics I found amusing to follow. The other characters introduced by the book - such as Handy Anderson and Emily Swallow - are also interesting in their own rights, those being the incredible lengths at which folks go for their own gain with the former and the horrific effects of neural re-socialization with the latter.
It was a very smooth, very good read, with the issues I pointed at being quite minor. 3/3
Legendary Point
Does this book get the legendary point, so craved and wanted by all and none at the same time? The answer is, of course, a resounding YES! This is a surprisingly pleasant book, made worse for me by the wonky translation, but it was still absolutely a wonder to experience. It really gets the nerves firing off desires to engage with more Starcraft related content (which is why the book exists in the first place) whilst also providing decent amounts of food for thought - in any case, you won’t go hungry.
Not only that, but it is one of the things that left me with a reasonably nuanced view of Journalism - in my childhood, that is - which then only got more and more nuanced. There is a measure of respect for journalists, and, frankly, for all people doing any kind of job, while there is also a very generous handful of salt in the way of my trust for the institutions that employ those people. I think that’s a very good perspective to have.
Then, there’s also the fact that this - Starcraft - is a bit of a funky rip-off of Warhammer 40,000. However, not only is it a very high-quality rip-off of Warhammer 40k (so high I’d almost be willing to dub it inspiration rather than plagiarism), it is also hundreds of times more accessible than Warhammer 40k. As a result of that, it provides a gritty, dreary type of Sci-Fi that would only be present in far less accessible and more complex books, like “Ender’s Game”, or outlandishly expensive and difficult to come by games, like the aforementioned Warhammer 40k.
Lastly, I just love the setting and the idea of it. It’s cool 1/1
Conclusion
9/10. This is a fascinatingly good book, for a book based off of a game. It’s got politics, it’s got human drama - of the most profound type, as well as of the least profound, most stupid type - and it’s an impressively compelling read that manages to capture the qualities of Sci-Fi that one really seeks when they set out to read Sci-Fi. I’d recommend it to literally everyone who enjoys provocative literature, Science Fiction and especially Starcraft.
I tuck it under my belt, another shining achievement that I proudly display. Damn, it makes me want to read more stuff related to Starcraft!