Review: Resistance- The Gathering Storm

Being my first novel based on a universe from a videogame, I wasn’t sure what to expect from "Resistance: The Gathering Storm." For the most part, I was pleased with what I got.

While author William C. Dietz doesn’t seem to have a particularly keen ear for dialogue and tends to reuse adjectives to the point it’s noticeable, the rest of his writing was good enough to keep me entertained.

I was mostly impressed by his knowledge of the Resistance universe. A fan of the games, I was pleased to see accurate descriptions of creatures, guns working the way they are supposed to and a world that felt like it was one and the same with the games. Dietz did his homework and it paid off.
Bridging the story of the first and second game in the series, "The Gathering Storm" tells of a time when the United States, locked in a war with the vicious Chimera, is fighting an equally important political battle in a barely surviving government.

Videogame hero Nathan Hale plays a key role in both struggles, offing aliens and taking a few moral stands along the way.

A secondary story involving a Chimeran concentration camp/conversion center and a former Secretary of War set on revealing government officials as traitors is a nice change of pace to the gunfights and military shenanigans Hale goes through. This can make for a somewhat disjointed story, but both sides are entertaining enough.

Overall, "The Gathering Storm" has enough going on to warrant a read for fans of the series. It fills an important gap and even answers a few questions left by the games. Your run-of-the-mill war novel fan will also likely find plenty to enjoy in this alternate history of World War II. It’s a hard recommend for the uninitiated, though.