The Command & Conquer Novel by Keith DeCandido is Better Then I Expected

When I started reading this, I wasn’t sure if I would like it. There were a lot of characters, and I wasn’t sure where this was going. I had played the game before but didn’t remember much about it besides aliens showing up.

This book is based on the plot of Command & Conquer 3. We’re in the Tiberium timeline, which means we get to read about the propaganda campaigns from GDI and NOD. We follow the GDI campaign because they are supposed to be the heroes, and NOD is supposed to be the bad guys.

I need to point something out very quickly. The book’s cover says that this is “The Official Novel of the Bestselling Real-Time Strategy Franchise from Electronic Arts.” I understand that EA owned the rights to the property at this point, but it rubs me the wrong way, knowing that Westwood Studios was ignored as the creator of the game.

Anyway, I went back to play the game to see how closely the book follows it. I’ll talk more about that later. From what I can remember of the game, this follows the game’s plot rather closely. Let’s get into the story.  

Story

We begin on the Philadelphia, which is an orbital space station that belongs to the GDI. I guess I should explain this, the GDI stands for the Global Defense Initiative. They’re the “good” guys in this story. NOD stands for the Brotherhood of NOD who are led by Kane and are religious fanatics who worship Tiberium. They’re the “bad” guys.

Tiberium is an alien crystal that was discovered before the first game in the Command & Conquer game. It gets its name from the Tiber River in Italy where it was first discovered. It has a parasitic effect on the environment, and at this time in the Command & Conquer timeline, Tiberium has made a good chunk of the planet uninhabitable. Several diseases have also been named after the crystal.

Back to the Philadelphia, we follow two people. One is a General and the other is a Reported for W3N. We get to know a bit about these two people, before the station is destroyed, and they both die. It is a little shocking, and at first, I didn’t like it, but as I kept reading, I changed my mind on it.

For the rest of the book, we follow two stories though points of view. Sometimes they alternate chapters, and sometimes the characters split a chapter. The first follows Ricardo Vega, a GDI soldier, and the second is Annabella Wu, a reporter with W3N.

I didn’t like this at first, but much like the introductory chapter, I started to like it by the end of the book. Near the end of the book, we drop Annabella and follow her boss, Penny. I didn’t like this that much, but it didn’t change much, and it made sense why it was done.

In Vega’s chapters, we follow the battles he takes part in. We get to know the soldiers in his unit, and we see how they react to his quick climbs up the ranks. He goes from Private to Captain by the end of the book.

In Annabella’s chapters, we see the impact that Tiberium and the war is having on the average people. These chapters are the best part of the book. I liked hearing this side of the Command & Conquer story as it is something we don’t see in the games.

Near the end of the book, these two stories merge as Annabella is assigned to do a story on Vega’s unit. This is when Annabella is largely replaced with her boss, Penny. What we get is Penny reviewing Annabella’s reports from Vega’s unit.

This was something I wasn’t sure about while I was reading, and now it still feels odd. I would’ve liked to stick with Annabella, but it would’ve been a rehash of Vega’s story. Then the aliens show up.

I still don’t understand why the series introduced aliens. It could’ve been cool, but instead the developers forgot about it after this game. Even the book downplays the aliens at the end of the book. It feels like a jump the shark moment.

Let me back up a bit. Vega and his unit win a bunch of fights and end up getting some new weapons to try out. They get energy weapons that are powered by Tiberium. This ties the two stories together nicely as we’ve been hearing about how dangerous Tiberium is during the Anabella sections.

While using the weapons for the first time, the aliens show up. The energy weapons are able to take the aliens out easier than conventional weapons. Because the aliens are attacking both GDI and NOD, we get an alliance for a brief time.

The two groups take out many of the alien towers that they were building. Eventually, there is only one tower left, and the alliance between the two sides break down as it is clear that Kane is still alive. GDI goes in alone and takes down the tower.

We get an epilogue. This lets us know that the war is over, the aliens are gone, and our heroes are okay. This ends with a cliff hanger and sets up a fourth game. Spoiler alert, it is going to get stupid.

Likes and Dislikes

This was a good book, but it took some time to get into. I was surprised by how quickly I was able to read this book. Even though it is close to 300 pages, it went by quickly. It does a good job of telling the story of the people in this game.

By having half of the story be from the perspective of a reporter, we get more human-interest stories. The war with NOD is what drives the plot, until the aliens show up, we get these breaks where Annabella is talking to normal people and exploring how people live with Tiberium.

The downside to having two stories going on at the same time is having too many characters. At times, I felt like there were too many characters in this book. The author does an excellent job of using them and reintroducing them, but there were times when I wondered who someone was and if I needed to care about them. Most of them die off near the end, and I was wondering who a few of them were.

The slag is a little annoying. Most of the curse words and insults are easy to guess their meanings, but there were a few when I was a little lost. I knew that “tibehead” was an insult, but I have no idea what it means. I’m guessing it has something to do with Tiberium.

At times there is too much lore in this story. It works in some cases where we’re learning about things alongside the characters, but every once in a while, I was a little confused. It wasn’t a big deal, but when you put it alongside the incomprehensible slang, it can make the story a little hard to follow.

I do like some of the characters. The author tries to give us some background on all of them, but with so many we don’t know much about them. This is one of the drawbacks to only having one book to cover so much story.

It isn’t bad at all. There aren’t too many things to complain about. The book has a lot of characters and not enough story to talk about them. There were a few times when a soldier would die, and I thought it was a little sad. Overall, it is a good book.

Book vs. Game

I mentioned this in the likes and dislikes, but the book has too many characters especially when we follow Vega. There were also a good number of characters on the space station that we meet and then they die in the first chapter.

I’m okay with the Philadelphia stuff because at least one of them is brought up a few times in the book. The other characters we meet there are never mentioned again. It is an important plot point for the book and game, which I feel is better handled in the book.

In the game, the player is shown the Philadelphia being destroyed, but it doesn’t mean all that much because we haven’t met too many people. There are only a handful of characters in the game, and they don’t have much to say about the Philadelphia. It is like they have other things to worry about, which they do.

The book does a better job of explaining how the world is dealing with Tiberium. We hear about the diseases, how people in the Yellow Zones live, and how NOD recruits’ people to their cause. It is very interesting, even if I wasn’t sure where it was going.

The game doesn’t focus on anything for a long time. The book takes a closer look at some of the smaller things by following Annabella around. However, both jump the shark a bit when aliens show up near the end of the game and book. I have no idea why that happened.

Final Thoughts

I wasn’t sure about this one when I started reading. I didn’t like the first chapter at first, but as I kept reading, I started to like how the author tied everything together. This is a very good story that moves the reader along quickly.

Even though this is a 300-page book, it went by very fast. I like how the civilian side of war is shown to up. We also get to know some of the soldiers before they die. Not all of them explain their motivations, but we do get some of them.

It is a fun retelling of the plot of Command & Conquer 3, and it builds on the story of the game. There was a lot that wasn’t shown to the player through the cutscenes. I remember the first time I played the game, and I had no idea what the Philadelphia was or why I should care about it blowing up. It felt like there was a lot missing from the story.

There is no way to make the inclusion of aliens make any sense. They get tossed into the end of the book and game, which makes them feel like an afterthought. You would’ve expected the aliens to become another faction and to learn more about them, but we don’t get that.

The aliens felt like a jump the shark moment in the game and the book. The author did a better job of trying to explain them, but it was still ridiculous. I like the story, but it ended up being flawed due to incorporating the ending from the video game.