adventurous dark funny mysterious medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven: Character
Strong character development: Yes
Loveable characters: Yes
Diverse cast of characters: No
Flaws of characters a main focus: No
dark mysterious medium-paced

All in all a pretty good read but it was missing depth. I've read a few movie to novel adaptations and they of course always stick to the movie script - I always try to read the book before seeing the movie but with the movie to book reverse situation Id seen this movie first- but often add layers, details... Just.. More if you know what I mean; which enhances the film, this book really didn't.

In this case, the movie was better, but then, it was Joss Whedon who made the movie and this is a novelisation. That said, the book format allowed Lebbon to delve deeper into that which you don't see in the movie and explored character motivations more. A few things didn't quite line up or could have been explored further, but overall, this made a decent read and was a great way to relive the movie without actually rewatching the movie.
dark sad tense fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven: Plot
Strong character development: No
Loveable characters: Yes
Diverse cast of characters: Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus: No

I get that there's a lot of sex in horror stories but there was just no need for this much.

Every single male in this story thinks about all the mad sex they could do with every single female they look at before they can think any other thought, it got a bit boring.

I read this because I'd heard it was better than the film, but its just fine.

tasharobinson's review

3.0

Read this one in order to discuss it on a podcast. (It was a great deep-dive conversation, with a ton to say about how the movie, novelization, and script all differ from each other.) It was an interesting read — very close to the movie in most regards, but with a few small bits that were in the screenplay and not in the movie, and with a visible attempt (familiar from other movie novelizations) to fill out the characters while not adding any dialogue. Unfortunately, the filling-out process turned Sitterson (the Robert Jenkins character) into a raging sexist, and Hadley (the Bradley Whitford character) into a racist. That isn't my interpretation — Sitterson (who narrates all the puppeteer segments, with Hadley relegated to just a background character) literally muses about what a sexist he is, and what a racist Hadley is.

This manifests throughout the book via Sitterson spending a LOT of time thinking about how "all women are mad" and holding them in contempt, while also ogling every woman he sees and thinking in detail about wanting to fuck them, especially Lin, the Chem head played in the movie by Amy Acker. (He also spends a fair bit of time focusing on her tight hair bun, which he thinks is so severe that styling her hair probably requires machine assistance.) Through Sitterson's ogling, we find out that Dana (Kristen Connolly) has shaved pubes, which "doesn't do it" for Sitterson, but he notes that Hadley really does like "baldies." I didn't need to know any of this.

Overall, it's a functional novelization. There are some poetic bits, usually built around violence and death. But it's nowhere near as satisfying, entertaining, funny, or scary as the movie.

Never saw the movie, but this was pretty good. Much more of a story line than I thought there would be.

The movie was wonderful, but this book only proved to me that, after reading another book by Tim Lebbon, the author has no writing ability what-so-ever. Lebbon writes like a high-schooler discovering the joys of writing for the first time. His writing is amateur. Poor sentence structure, cliched lines, over-describing everything, etc. He simply destroyed what the movie presented by offering a boring and uninspired rendition of the film. Do not read this book. Watch the movie instead.

I really really liked this