Eroldren continues his spotlight review over Blizzard’s Heart of the Swarm short story series.

“No stranger to us and the SF community, David Gerrold continues writing more delightful StarCraft storytelling, lore, and mysteries.” – The Founding Fields

Of Star Trek fame as the screenwriter for “The Trouble With Tribbles” and Hugo and Nebula award-winning SF author, David Gerrold made his return to the StarCraft universe with a short story featuring a lone Terran and Dark Templar. And through his manga storylines for StarCraft were indeed entertaining; reading several pages of text was entirely a different medium of entertainment.

Jake formerly of the Dominion Armed Forces (And not to be confused with Jake Ramsey from Christie Golden’s Dark Templar Saga.)  the wayward terran who wants peace from the Koprulu wars and bustling lifestyle of civilization gone into hiding out in unknown territory. Through his mind-set Jake’s character one that seamlessly fits into StarCraft that reader can sympathize and fall immerse with as he explores his new alien home.

On an offhand note, I do love that Gerrold did integrated real-life elements into “In the Dark” and StarCraft fiction that surrounds the planet which Jake decides to settle upon and named it such as Goldilocks. Little details such as this are always neat additions that can help flesh out any world we want to be immersed in.

Anyway, although at the risk of telling spoilers I would like to also bring some attention on our secondary character that the art cover features, the Dark Templar: Lassatar. As I said beforehand “In the Dark” told mostly through the eyes of Jake the terran we’ve also given a parallel account from Lassatar’s perspective. And from it I drew realization much to my delight “In the Dark” was partly a follow-up story of Gerrold’s when he first wrote for Blizzard and Tokyopop in “Fear the Reaper.” There were seeded questions I had wonder about but they weren’t quite so big-time then, except here it was unexpectedly answered (to some extent) and there’s now other questions that have been left unsaid. Perhaps once Legacy of the Void expansion nears it release day, hopefully the LotV wave of short stories will bring back David Gerrold to revisit this storyline.

Regardless of “In the Dark” being one of the heftier short stories in its page count, it’s also bound to be one of Blizzard’s strongest stories they’ve released so far yet. Plus mixing a host of troublesome terrors, alien intrigue, and decently paced action we got a great read. So if you got any interest in StarCraft and free short fiction, this should be a worthwhile story you ought to give up some of your reading time to.

Until next time,

Overall Verdict: 9/10