Ascension[]
Written by human author Drew Karpyshyn, the popular military-historical novel Ascension focuses on several lives warped or destroyed by the human-survivalist cult Cerberus. Following the Citadel attack of 2182 [sic] and the accelerated rise of human influence in the galaxy, Cerberus instituted Ascension, a secret biotics program aimed at producing a super-human warrior. Biotics prodigy Gillian Grayson, a 12-year-old autistic girl, suffered for the sins of her father, a secret Cerberus operative and red sand addict. Paul Grayson was ensnared in a web of criminality involving a quarian traitor and extending to Saren Arterius, the geth, and a terminal threat to the quarian flotilla. Having fled to the Terminus Systems with his daughter after exposure of Cerberus's link to Ascension, Grayson was pursued by Gillian's teacher, scientist Kahlee Sanders, initiating a chain of tragedies that demonstrated Cerberus's nearly-unlimited power and boundless ambition.
Fornax[]
Launched in 2167, Fornax magazine described itself as "the galaxy's finest xenophilia." By its fifth year, Fornax became the first human magazine to offer full five-sensory stimulation, a previously-unaffordable magazine technology made profitable by the economy of scale. With a monthly publishing run of 127 million available in both in [sic] hard-copy and direct download, Fornax offers a range of alien models with particular emphasis on the unisexual asari, although both genders of quarians, drell, batarians, and volus are regularly depicted. Specialty editions such as Genit-elcor and Krogasm service devoted but smaller markets.
Revelation[]
Revelation is a popular military-historical novel by human writer Drew Karpyshyn that dramatizes human conflicts and political expansion following the 2148 discovery of the Prothean mass relay on Pluto and the beginning of human galactic exploration. In 2165, years before his rise to political prominence, Lt. David Anderson was a young veteran of the turian war, investigating the destruction of top secret military research station Shanxi [sic]. Every scientist stationed at Shanxi [sic] had been slaughtered except Kahlee Sanders, who'd disappeared with secret files making her Anderson's prime suspect. The book traced Anderson's dangerous investigation of Sanders, which included run-ins with Blue Suns mercenaries and a krogan bounty hunter. The investigation uncovered illegal research into AI, and forced Anderson into an alliance with human-hating turian Spectre Saren Arterius, who would eventually enter into a genocidal collaboration with the geth.