New Mass Effect novel due this fall

Mass Effect 3 is slated to arrive this coming holiday season. Today, book publisher Del Rey announced that the game will have some company in the Mass Effect universe when it launches, thanks to a new spin-off novel due out this fall.

Titled Mass Effect: Deception, the new book will be the fourth novel based on the sci-fi role-playing game series, which debuted in 2007 and continued with a sequel in early 2010. It is preceded by the books Revelation, Ascension, and Retribution, all of which were written by Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic scenario scribe Drew Karpyshyn.

With Karpyshyn now having relocated to Austin to help craft plotlines for BioWare's massively multiplayer game Star Wars: The Old Republic, writing duties are being transferred to William C. Dietz. Dietz is the author of more than 30 novels, including the game tie-ins Halo: The Flood, Starcraft II: Heaven's Devils, Hitman: Enemy Within, and Resistance: The Gathering Storm.

As for Mass Effect: Deception's plot, it centers on the autistic biotic Gillian Grayson who was featured in Mass Effect: Ascension. After being subjected to dangerous experimentation as part of the Alliance's Ascension Project, she was spirited away to the Quarian Migrant fleet to hide her from the shadowy Cerberus organization, which viewed her as a weapon. Now a young woman, she is beginning to master her powers--but falls in with a group of biotic radicals "who believe their powers make them superior to ordinary humans."