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3.65 AVERAGE
3.65 AVERAGE
adventurous
dark
mysterious
tense
slow-paced
I’ve never played the games or read any of the books, and even though this one was written last, I felt like I should start at the beginning.
I can’t wait to continue this series. Whatever I thought I knew about the story of the Resident Evil Universe, these zombies were way cooler and more intense than I thought.
I can’t wait to continue this series. Whatever I thought I knew about the story of the Resident Evil Universe, these zombies were way cooler and more intense than I thought.
Ni bueno ni malo, sigue la historia del videojuego y ofrece algunos detalles extra que pueden gustar a los más fans. Más allá de eso, para echar el rato no está mal, algo así como las novelas del Oeste que leían nuestros abuelos.
adventurous
dark
mysterious
tense
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
I absolutely love this book. While I recommend this book to any fans of the Resident Evil games, I also recommend waiting to read this book until after the rest of the series.
RE0 was released as a video game in 2002, contradicting much of what happened in RE1; the book is no different. The book was written in 2004, six years after the first book in S.D. Perry’s series. It is a bit jarring to read this book and learn everything Rebecca and Billy went through and all they discovered, only for it to never be mentioned moving forward. I can’t fault the author, given that she never had this story to work with in the beginning.
Despite the continuity errors stemming from it, I thoroughly enjoyed this book. The pacing is great and the story and mystery of what’s really happening is enough to keep you on your toes. Don’t even get me started on the setting: dark woods set deep in the mountains, midnight train infested with zombies, underground training facility crawling with flesh-hungry terrors. The zombies and creatures are written with enough detail to paint a gory picture that leaves you sick at the thought of such horrors actually existing.
And as great as the story and settings are, the characters are what really make the book stand out. Perry is able to write protagonist Rebecca Chambers as a very strong and able character while still staying grounded in reality. The confidence in her abilities and trust in her instincts make her a great S.T.A.R.S. member. On the other hand, Billy Cohen is introduced as a convicted murderer who’s been court-martialed for his crimes, and yet, within the first few pages of his POV, it’s easy to see that there’s more to his story. The development of these characters and their uneasy alliance is one for the ages.
RE0 was released as a video game in 2002, contradicting much of what happened in RE1; the book is no different. The book was written in 2004, six years after the first book in S.D. Perry’s series. It is a bit jarring to read this book and learn everything Rebecca and Billy went through and all they discovered, only for it to never be mentioned moving forward. I can’t fault the author, given that she never had this story to work with in the beginning.
Despite the continuity errors stemming from it, I thoroughly enjoyed this book. The pacing is great and the story and mystery of what’s really happening is enough to keep you on your toes. Don’t even get me started on the setting: dark woods set deep in the mountains, midnight train infested with zombies, underground training facility crawling with flesh-hungry terrors. The zombies and creatures are written with enough detail to paint a gory picture that leaves you sick at the thought of such horrors actually existing.
And as great as the story and settings are, the characters are what really make the book stand out. Perry is able to write protagonist Rebecca Chambers as a very strong and able character while still staying grounded in reality. The confidence in her abilities and trust in her instincts make her a great S.T.A.R.S. member. On the other hand, Billy Cohen is introduced as a convicted murderer who’s been court-martialed for his crimes, and yet, within the first few pages of his POV, it’s easy to see that there’s more to his story. The development of these characters and their uneasy alliance is one for the ages.
As far as an adaptation goes it’s pretty good. It made me want to replay the game so mission accomplished.
3 stars because honestly the plot isn’t the best not the characters. The author talks about there being errors due to the games own continuity, which I totally get. However, there was numerous typos in this version I read (physical paperback)
3 stars because honestly the plot isn’t the best not the characters. The author talks about there being errors due to the games own continuity, which I totally get. However, there was numerous typos in this version I read (physical paperback)
This book was one of the better of the Resident Evil series. I really enjoyed the "unusual" partnership of Rebecca and Billy. And as always, the weird and grotesque monsters that Umbrella has cooked up.
Oh boy, it's rare that I get to review an unabashedly bad book. It's not really its fault, I know, but that doesn't change the fact that it's bad. Like, really bad.
So let's get the elephant in the room out of the way first: Resident Evil games are not well written. One might even say they're quite poorly written. Resident Evil's relationship with narrative is complicated, distant and at times non-existant. The games are designed around setpieces and then the narrative is slotted in where they could. And the games certainly weren't written with sequels, or prequels for that matter, in mind. So it's a patch work over-arching narrative with instances of narratives put together as best can be.
And, of course, there's nothing wrong with that. Ultimately, a game has to be a game and that's what Resident Evil aims to be. Very few people play the series for the story and mostly to get a bit scared. In theory, a book series, then, would be the perfect opportunity to actually fix a lot of the problems since the actual game aspects of the game aren't there to present an issue. No need to hunt for oddly shaped keys or running back and forth searching every nook and cranny for whatever you missed the first time around.
I say in theory because that's obviously not what happened here. Perhaps I picked the wrong book to start with, despite it being the chronologically first. Based on, probably, the least game of the original five (tied with Code: Veronica), the book is about as engaging as the game itself. The story is just blatantly dull, full of cliches revisited and paper thin characters. That might work in a game where gameplay will always be king, but when you write a book, those things become an issue.
My bias here is pretty clear, that much I can admit. I never cared for the character of Rebecca Chambers and... well, neither did the games. She's in the first game as a supporting character, this one as a main character and then one of the animated movies. This in a franchise that cannot stomach the idea of ever putting a character to rest. She's hopelessly without any sort of real character beyond "Plucky young girl out to prove herself" and never seems to grow out of that either. And then there's Billy who's... honestly, I finished this book a day ago and any sense of his character is already disappearing. He was a soldier and constantly struggled with his heroic nature in the face of things which is not very inspiring to read about. He was sentenced (wrongly, of course) to death for a war crime and... that's about it. I think Billy was short for another name, probably William, but I couldn't tell you for sure. He doesn't appear in any other games or even in connected media. Imagine that.
I just keep imagining how much more awesome the story would be if he was actually guilty but they still had to work together to get through it. That's interesting drama.
From what I can remember from reading this book, it plays out pretty much exactly the same way as the game does. It starts on the train (the only interesting part of the game) then moves into another mansion (a dull repeat of the first game) then downhill (literally) from there. The geography or timescale is never very well established in the book and when you thought loads of time was passing, none really was and then there are strange, sudden leaps of time where you didn't expect it. The whole story takes place over the course of a single night (I think) but when exactly certain things happen in the night is hard to tell. At one point the book establishes that the whole place is going to be destroyed in exactly one hour and then it feels like the two main characters wander about for several more hours.
And because the author chose to skip over a lot of really boring walking, I got the feeling like they were walking miles upon miles. Even the trainride is extremely indeterminate, taking up a pretty hefty part of the book while in reality only taking, at most, an hour.
This stems from the fact that the author didn't trim the story enough. And with that, we run into the issues with adaptations in the first place, especially of games; do you keep the gameplay parts of the game or do you condense the story to fit snugly in a book? And to make the book actually nice to read, do you change things to make better use of the medium?
Well... obviously, yes. I know this point will be contentious but, honestly, there's little you can do to change my mind on this.
When the book actually went out of its way to describe some of the fetch quest puzzles from the game, I audibly groaned. What's even worse? The book includes really unneccessary puzzles but streamlined to such a degree they serve no actual purpose except for a dumb cameo. It even goes out of its way to address this by the villain being in a hurry and so he just hurries things along a bit by leading the characters by the hand.
The book does this with the boss fights from the game as well. At times they're built up as this big, scary thing but most of them are instantly resolved. Not to spoil but two of the four boss fights depicted (not counting the final boss) are just kind of skipped entirely. They're mentioned, the characters get really scared and... run away? And it works? The bosses served no actual purpose other than hurry the characters along a little bit. And I mean a LITTLE bit.
The question I asked myself a lot while reading this was... "What's the point of this?" And that is not a good question to keep asking yourself when the book never gives an answer.
But perhaps what really sinks this book is that the author just didn't write a very good book. The dialog was terrible but that can at least be sort of excused by being inspired by the game where it was even worse. But the inner monolog of the characters is entirely new and that's awful too. I cannot tell you how tired I got of Billy questioning his heroic and "good" nature (you're a trained killer sent on black ops, maybe dial it back a bit with that shit) or how obnoxious Rebecca got with her "take me seriously, dammit"-pouting. Not only does it not jive with her later appearances, which is less the author's fault and more the game series' fault, but she does nothing to earn any sort of growth. Her mood and abilities flip flop like crazy and she only seems capable when the author decides Billy has had too much time to shine.
And boy does Billy shine a lot. If the book was trying to build up Rebecca as some sort of fierce warrior, it spectacularly failed at that because without Billy, Rebecca wouldn't have stood a chance. And as for Billy, considering his awesome nature as a god damned black ops soldier, probably would've made it out way better without Rebecca dragging him into danger all the time.
Neither is it a very atmospheric book. It seems to rely entirely on you having played the game, the descriptions are extremely spartan and very little time is given to actually make anything threatening. Zombies are essentially reduced to a joke here, which is perhaps fitting, but none of the other monsters have any sort of regularity or presence to them to make up for the lack of zombie threat. Most monsters are given brief cameos because they're famous from the games, a singular Hunter makes a "blink and you'll miss it"-appearance towards the end of the book and there was no reason for it (other than it happens in the game, I think). It did have a perfectly good threat in the mimics or false men but despite being built up by the book, they only show up two or three times and are dispatched with little fanfare and relative ease.
There's very little payoff for anything in the book. It seems almost cobbled together from bits and pieces without knowing how they fit together. In one "boss fight", the text makes bloody well sure you know the boss' weakspot and then the book just... ignores it. Skips it entirely and dismisses the boss another way. Then what was the point of that?
There's that question again. "What was the point of that?" I rarely take my media very seriously, I'm in it to be entertained and I'll work hard to ignore things so I can be entertained, dammit. But this is possibly one of the first times that despite my best effort, I couldn't help but to make mental notes while reading it so I could tear it apart sufficiently in a review. I even noted down specific page numbers so I could go back and reread so I could get good and angry again.
This is a bad book. It's just flawed in every conceivable way I can think of. I was quite excited to get into these books, read alternate takes on the events of the first five games and see a different side of things. I thought it obvious that when you adapt something from a game to a book, you have to cut certain parts out. I expected the boss fights to be pulse pounding, nail gripping affairs, not glorified cameos. I expected the plot to be sped along and skip all the room searching and walking back and forth, not puzzles that serve no purpose except to lengthen gameplay, I mean, add to the page numbering. I expected to be given new insights into the heroes and villains, be presented with new, exciting lore and not just agonizing memories of playing a game I never liked.
Instead it's just like the game: bland and poorly written with crap characters but without any of the horror or the gameplay.
If you want a faithful recreation of the game... just play the game. Give this book a hard miss. Maybe like me, the author didn't care much for this game and so couldn't bring their A-game. But from the reviews I've read about the other books, I don't hold much hope.
So let's get the elephant in the room out of the way first: Resident Evil games are not well written. One might even say they're quite poorly written. Resident Evil's relationship with narrative is complicated, distant and at times non-existant. The games are designed around setpieces and then the narrative is slotted in where they could. And the games certainly weren't written with sequels, or prequels for that matter, in mind. So it's a patch work over-arching narrative with instances of narratives put together as best can be.
And, of course, there's nothing wrong with that. Ultimately, a game has to be a game and that's what Resident Evil aims to be. Very few people play the series for the story and mostly to get a bit scared. In theory, a book series, then, would be the perfect opportunity to actually fix a lot of the problems since the actual game aspects of the game aren't there to present an issue. No need to hunt for oddly shaped keys or running back and forth searching every nook and cranny for whatever you missed the first time around.
I say in theory because that's obviously not what happened here. Perhaps I picked the wrong book to start with, despite it being the chronologically first. Based on, probably, the least game of the original five (tied with Code: Veronica), the book is about as engaging as the game itself. The story is just blatantly dull, full of cliches revisited and paper thin characters. That might work in a game where gameplay will always be king, but when you write a book, those things become an issue.
My bias here is pretty clear, that much I can admit. I never cared for the character of Rebecca Chambers and... well, neither did the games. She's in the first game as a supporting character, this one as a main character and then one of the animated movies. This in a franchise that cannot stomach the idea of ever putting a character to rest. She's hopelessly without any sort of real character beyond "Plucky young girl out to prove herself" and never seems to grow out of that either. And then there's Billy who's... honestly, I finished this book a day ago and any sense of his character is already disappearing. He was a soldier and constantly struggled with his heroic nature in the face of things which is not very inspiring to read about. He was sentenced (wrongly, of course) to death for a war crime and... that's about it. I think Billy was short for another name, probably William, but I couldn't tell you for sure. He doesn't appear in any other games or even in connected media. Imagine that.
I just keep imagining how much more awesome the story would be if he was actually guilty but they still had to work together to get through it. That's interesting drama.
From what I can remember from reading this book, it plays out pretty much exactly the same way as the game does. It starts on the train (the only interesting part of the game) then moves into another mansion (a dull repeat of the first game) then downhill (literally) from there. The geography or timescale is never very well established in the book and when you thought loads of time was passing, none really was and then there are strange, sudden leaps of time where you didn't expect it. The whole story takes place over the course of a single night (I think) but when exactly certain things happen in the night is hard to tell. At one point the book establishes that the whole place is going to be destroyed in exactly one hour and then it feels like the two main characters wander about for several more hours.
And because the author chose to skip over a lot of really boring walking, I got the feeling like they were walking miles upon miles. Even the trainride is extremely indeterminate, taking up a pretty hefty part of the book while in reality only taking, at most, an hour.
This stems from the fact that the author didn't trim the story enough. And with that, we run into the issues with adaptations in the first place, especially of games; do you keep the gameplay parts of the game or do you condense the story to fit snugly in a book? And to make the book actually nice to read, do you change things to make better use of the medium?
Well... obviously, yes. I know this point will be contentious but, honestly, there's little you can do to change my mind on this.
When the book actually went out of its way to describe some of the fetch quest puzzles from the game, I audibly groaned. What's even worse? The book includes really unneccessary puzzles but streamlined to such a degree they serve no actual purpose except for a dumb cameo. It even goes out of its way to address this by the villain being in a hurry and so he just hurries things along a bit by leading the characters by the hand.
The book does this with the boss fights from the game as well. At times they're built up as this big, scary thing but most of them are instantly resolved. Not to spoil but two of the four boss fights depicted (not counting the final boss) are just kind of skipped entirely. They're mentioned, the characters get really scared and... run away? And it works? The bosses served no actual purpose other than hurry the characters along a little bit. And I mean a LITTLE bit.
The question I asked myself a lot while reading this was... "What's the point of this?" And that is not a good question to keep asking yourself when the book never gives an answer.
But perhaps what really sinks this book is that the author just didn't write a very good book. The dialog was terrible but that can at least be sort of excused by being inspired by the game where it was even worse. But the inner monolog of the characters is entirely new and that's awful too. I cannot tell you how tired I got of Billy questioning his heroic and "good" nature (you're a trained killer sent on black ops, maybe dial it back a bit with that shit) or how obnoxious Rebecca got with her "take me seriously, dammit"-pouting. Not only does it not jive with her later appearances, which is less the author's fault and more the game series' fault, but she does nothing to earn any sort of growth. Her mood and abilities flip flop like crazy and she only seems capable when the author decides Billy has had too much time to shine.
And boy does Billy shine a lot. If the book was trying to build up Rebecca as some sort of fierce warrior, it spectacularly failed at that because without Billy, Rebecca wouldn't have stood a chance. And as for Billy, considering his awesome nature as a god damned black ops soldier, probably would've made it out way better without Rebecca dragging him into danger all the time.
Neither is it a very atmospheric book. It seems to rely entirely on you having played the game, the descriptions are extremely spartan and very little time is given to actually make anything threatening. Zombies are essentially reduced to a joke here, which is perhaps fitting, but none of the other monsters have any sort of regularity or presence to them to make up for the lack of zombie threat. Most monsters are given brief cameos because they're famous from the games, a singular Hunter makes a "blink and you'll miss it"-appearance towards the end of the book and there was no reason for it (other than it happens in the game, I think). It did have a perfectly good threat in the mimics or false men but despite being built up by the book, they only show up two or three times and are dispatched with little fanfare and relative ease.
There's very little payoff for anything in the book. It seems almost cobbled together from bits and pieces without knowing how they fit together. In one "boss fight", the text makes bloody well sure you know the boss' weakspot and then the book just... ignores it. Skips it entirely and dismisses the boss another way. Then what was the point of that?
There's that question again. "What was the point of that?" I rarely take my media very seriously, I'm in it to be entertained and I'll work hard to ignore things so I can be entertained, dammit. But this is possibly one of the first times that despite my best effort, I couldn't help but to make mental notes while reading it so I could tear it apart sufficiently in a review. I even noted down specific page numbers so I could go back and reread so I could get good and angry again.
This is a bad book. It's just flawed in every conceivable way I can think of. I was quite excited to get into these books, read alternate takes on the events of the first five games and see a different side of things. I thought it obvious that when you adapt something from a game to a book, you have to cut certain parts out. I expected the boss fights to be pulse pounding, nail gripping affairs, not glorified cameos. I expected the plot to be sped along and skip all the room searching and walking back and forth, not puzzles that serve no purpose except to lengthen gameplay, I mean, add to the page numbering. I expected to be given new insights into the heroes and villains, be presented with new, exciting lore and not just agonizing memories of playing a game I never liked.
Instead it's just like the game: bland and poorly written with crap characters but without any of the horror or the gameplay.
If you want a faithful recreation of the game... just play the game. Give this book a hard miss. Maybe like me, the author didn't care much for this game and so couldn't bring their A-game. But from the reviews I've read about the other books, I don't hold much hope.
dark
tense
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
Zero Hour is numbered as #0 as it's based off of Resident Evil 0, which covers events before the first Resident Evil game (and in this case, the first book). In this case, we follow Rebecca Chambers and Billy Coen, who are the dual leads of Resident Evil 0.
Zero Hour is kind of more of the same of the other RE books I've read in this series. The writing isn't super spectacular or anything, but it's decent and passable, and doesn't distract from the story at all. It follows the game plot well enough and covers what it needs to. Rebecca is great and I care about what's happening to her. Ditto goes to Billy.
At times, I was mildly bored, but those moments were quick and didn't last for long.
All and all, it's a decent novel adaptation of a video game.
Zero Hour is kind of more of the same of the other RE books I've read in this series. The writing isn't super spectacular or anything, but it's decent and passable, and doesn't distract from the story at all. It follows the game plot well enough and covers what it needs to. Rebecca is great and I care about what's happening to her. Ditto goes to Billy.
At times, I was mildly bored, but those moments were quick and didn't last for long.
All and all, it's a decent novel adaptation of a video game.