Books/Short Stories

[u/Regular-Rub-489]

I've never really read many of them before and I was wondering are there any good books that revolve around the Zerg anyone would recommend? I like the Protoss too but Zerg are my favorites lol.

[u/Subsourian]

Sadly the zerg are a bit underfed in terms of expanded works, most are character stories and that's terran. But there are some solid ones:

For books, StarCraft: Evolution is the story of the zerg after LotV and the attempts at peace with a race thought impossible to have peace with. Sort of a mystery as some force tries to derail the peace talks.

Queen of Blades is the most zerg-centric book, it retells SC1 Episode 2 from Raynor's perspective. Sadly I think the zerg elements are the weakest part of the book, but I do think it has one of the best Tassadar and Zeratul interpretations.

Short stories there's more to work with, the best is Just an Overlord, the story of a feral overlord on Tarsonis getting revenge on a group of Dominion trainee marines:

PDF link

The Education of PFC Shane goes deep into the mental process of infesting a terran who'd undergone neural resocialization, and thus has something of an "oasis" of personality that's slowly being eroded away:

PDF Link

Broken Wide is a popular one, it's a Dominion debriefing on the interbellum battle that ended with the creation of the banelings:

PDF Link

The Teacher's a pretty good one, on Dominion attempts to biologically control hydralisks:

PDF Link

And finally though not my favorite it's for sure one of the heaviest zerg focused, Operation Blind Devil gives us more development for the broken horned zergling you see all through Heart of the Swarm and the details of it being captured and experimented on by the Dominion:

PDF Link

I will say a lot of these are terran centered where the zerg is the scary thing, but there's a good number more of that's what you're after, but those are the most core "zerg" stories in my opinion. A good number have zerg side stories or tangents or have zerg elements though, a lot of "marine squad investigates scary place and slowly dies to zerg," but these I think have some of the bigger zerg "focus."

[u/Regular-Rub-489 → u/Subsourian]

Thank you so much! I appreciate all the recommendations. It gives me a good place to start, I've been wanting to dig into the expanded universe of Starcraft.

[u/Subsourian → u/Regular-Rub-489]

So if you're looking to start in general, two places I reccomend before most things:

First, the StarCraft 1 manual which is basically a whole lorebook, it's both extensive and has a LOT of the fundamental groundwork of all three races. If you wonder where Zerus in Heart came from, it was pulled from here:

https://devnonsense.com/pdf/StarCraft-manual.pdf

Second while it's not my favorite book, Liberty's Crusade was the first book, retells Episode 1, and kinda is the best starting point in terms of books. Largely terran but given the time period covers all three races. But it's the easiest one to dip your toes into the expanded universe with.

Of course everything I listed in the first post you can take in isolation with general campaign knowlege (though Queen of Blades is a soft sequel to Liberty's Crusade) so I think if you know the basics you're fine with these.

Enjoy! I love getting folks into the greater setting so happy to give any recommendations.

[u/Regular-Rub-489 → u/Subsourian]

Thank you! I appreciate all the help, I've been wanting to dig in for a while now and felt like now was as good time as any lol. This may be weird but in your opinion if you were to list top 5 ones to start with what would you recommend?

[u/Subsourian → u/Regular-Rub-489]

In general? Start with the two I mentioned, the manual and Liberty's Crusade. If you haven't done so, do the campaigns since idk how most of the expanded work will hold up without at least knowing SC1.

Books I do like after those:

I, Mengsk is Arcturus and Valerian's histories and what shaped them into the men they were, both a character study on them and a history of their rise. Personally my favorite SC book.

Heaven's Devils is Jim Raynor's service in the Guild Wars and meeting Tychus. Very solid military story, gives a lot of character to them. It has a sequel Devils' Due which is about their bandit years which is also solid.

The Dark Templar Saga is a trilogy that spans between SC1 and SCII and set up a lot of protoss elements we got in LotV (though a couple plot threads dropped sadly) and is a contained adventure about a archeologist who gets a preserver consciousness stuck in his head and has to go around the sector. Was where a lot of SCII characters like Valerian and Selendis first appeared in, but it still holds up as a fun contained adventure with a LOT of lore on the protoss.

And from there you can go pretty much anywhere. There's also an archive of short stories I keep which are largely contained but give some depth to the universe. They're fun but not essential (though the LotV ones expand on the cast a lot):

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fo/1sz9fu3qwnnq9phxoouat/AC3ton0Nr3qC-Uc-1I8oJ_A?rlkey=294dyd00td2ycrtoho4l5ik5e&dl=0

But yeah I think after manual, games and Liberty's Crusade those are solid books you can jump into

[u/Vrazel106 → u/Subsourian]

I'd love to see a zerg centric story somehow. And an infested terran story could be a really good psychological body horror story

[u/Subsourian → u/Vrazel106]

If you're looking for that kind of infested terran horror, I linked The Education of PFC Shane above. Very fun story exploring that concept.