that greatly expand her backstory before the first StarCraft game. The novel Uprising portrays Kerrigan's training as a Ghost assassin from an early age, where she is subjected to intense psychological abuse from her Confederate trainer, Lieutenant Rumm. When she was a young girl, an accident, most likely involving her powers, kills her mother and puts her father in a vegetative state. Consequently, Kerrigan is terrified to use her psionic abilities, and refuses Rumm's demands to show her power, even when he threatens to kill her father. Kerrigan is eventually subdued with mental implants and used as a top Confederate assassin until she is rescued by Arcturus Mengsk. The novels Liberty's Crusade and Queen of Blades provide novelisations for Kerrigan's actions in Episodes I and II of StarCraft respectively. Liberty's Crusade develops the implied relationship between Jim Raynor and Kerrigan, while Queen of Blades serves to demonstrate Kerrigan's complete transformation by the Zerg, her removal of her inhibitions and morality, and its effect on her former love, Raynor. In addition, Kerrigan briefly appears in Gabriel Mesta's Shadow of the Xel'naga, set between StarCraft and Brood War, in which she attempts to secure a Xel'naga artifact on the independent colony world Bhekar Ro, but fails when it eradicates her forces. Kerrigan is also observed in Shadow Hunters, the second novel in The Dark Templar Saga, a trilogy that acts as a precursor to StarCraft II. After sensing a nexus of joined human minds caused by protagonist Jake Ramsey at the end of the first novel, Kerrigan sends Zerg forces to its location, infesting the half-dead body of a Dominion-funded black marketeer, Ethan Stewart. As the attack is the first Zerg activity for years, it inadvertently raises the suspicions of Arcturus Mengsk, who wonders what could have motivated it. Reception Kerrigan has been received positively by critics. IGN's review of StarCraft drew note to the evolution of Kerrigan's character through the story, labelling it as unforgettable and describing her transformation as "chilling". Kerrigan was included among the 50 greatest female characters in the history of video games by Tom's Games in 2007, which described her personality as amounting to one of the "most fascinatingly complex and memorable characters of all time." In 2012, she was ranked as 23rd "hottest" fictional woman of the year by UGO Entertainment. At the 2010 Spike Video Game Awards, Tricia Helfer won "Best Performance by a Human