More like 2.5 then a plain 'ol 2.

The Mass Effect books started out strongly enough by actually affecting the original game in some way (or, at least, making it deeper and more complex) but each subsequent entry gets weaker and weaker.

The character of Kahlee Sanders, who started out pretty righteous and important, seems like background material now. She did more in her cool cameo in Mass Effect 3 then she does in this book. In this book, and I am not kidding, Sanders eats three meals a day, all the time. Her and Anderson, a character severely relegated in Mass Effect 2 but boosted significantly in ME3, seriously do nothing but eat in this book.

And as if realizing the story lines of the characters created in Ascension (book #2) were running thin, the book decides to dispatch with them in rather cruel ways. . .but before they can kill them off, they make sure any innocence or decency is stripped from them and any respect we have for them is removed.

Which makes half of Deception's focus, on the true asshole villain from ME3, Kai Leng, doubly concerning as I either have to follow a true bad guy (though getting some of his backstory was cool) or watch characters I read in two or three other books go from believable and cool to rather dastardly and one dimensional. Ugh.

I might not have been paying too much attention but I didn't seem to notice too many universe problems with this book as has been the major complaint (so much of a complaint that the book company and game creators plan on restructuring the book for future releases. . .just like the ending of their game? Hmmmm) but I did feel like I wasn't in the Mass Effect universe at all at some points.

Oddly, the approach to Kai Leng is just what I wanted from Mass Effect #1: Retribution with the character of Saren. There is no escaping that Kai Leng is an evil prick in ME3 but this book fleshes him out a bit and humanizes him at points. I liked this because in ME3 he is just a cheap-shotting dick. . .in this book he has somewhat of a conscious and makes mistakes. If only they did this with Saren in Retribution. Saren, in that book, is just psychotic whereas the first Mass Effect game gave you the impression that Saren might have been ruthless, but had a moral code that was corrupted by the Reapers.

The action was pretty solid in this book and that deserves a whole star in itself. And you can't go wrong with Aria T'Loak, one of my all-time favorite ME characters. She gets a lot of page-time in this one and that kept me interested. Still, it took me a loooong time to read this because my interest waned at many points. This book became a 'completionist's chore rather then a fun activity. . .and that is why it is on the lower side of the star ratings.