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3.38 AVERAGE
3.38 AVERAGE
adventurous
funny
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
adventurous
lighthearted
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
It reads as exactly what it is, a poor imitation of Hitchhiker's Guide.
It's also just an insane idea to try and adapt a point and click adventure game into a novel. Admittedly I didn't know that was what it was when I bought it out of Oxfam, but even if I had gone on not knowing, I probably would have figured it out the first time a character said "Before we can go onto the next bit of the plot, we need to find the three doo-dads and bimblebomples that are hidden somewhere around the immediate area." There's a brief parahraph where they describe a puzzle in the game where you need to convince a malfunctioning robot bartender to hand over a computer part that's behind his bar, but he refuses to do so if you ask him directly, so you need to figure out a clever solution instead. But the novelisation just gives you a description of the premise, then says "and then the characters solved the problem somehow, anyway, moving on".
It's trying desperately to be funny, but it falls short on all but maybe two or three jokes. Many of the jokes included are the same one over and over; The first time they said "I know this is an alien planet but they still have french champagne, don't think about it too hard" it was moderately funny. The subsequent dozen times they made that same joke (or some variation thereof) it just felt incredibly lazy.
All of the science fiction ideas (which weren't even all that good to begin with) take a backseat for half the time so that Jones can instead prattle on about a small group of uninteresting characters, composed of two women who are constantly objectified and about a dozen men who are constantly objectifying. I guess that's supposed to be funny, but it's not.
Being written by Terry Jones, it had the potential to be very funny, as does anything that is ever worked on by one of the Pythons, but what they say about Monty Python is true. Only about 10% of it is any good, and the rest of it is absolute crap. This book is very much part of the 90%.
It's also just an insane idea to try and adapt a point and click adventure game into a novel. Admittedly I didn't know that was what it was when I bought it out of Oxfam, but even if I had gone on not knowing, I probably would have figured it out the first time a character said "Before we can go onto the next bit of the plot, we need to find the three doo-dads and bimblebomples that are hidden somewhere around the immediate area." There's a brief parahraph where they describe a puzzle in the game where you need to convince a malfunctioning robot bartender to hand over a computer part that's behind his bar, but he refuses to do so if you ask him directly, so you need to figure out a clever solution instead. But the novelisation just gives you a description of the premise, then says "and then the characters solved the problem somehow, anyway, moving on".
It's trying desperately to be funny, but it falls short on all but maybe two or three jokes. Many of the jokes included are the same one over and over; The first time they said "I know this is an alien planet but they still have french champagne, don't think about it too hard" it was moderately funny. The subsequent dozen times they made that same joke (or some variation thereof) it just felt incredibly lazy.
All of the science fiction ideas (which weren't even all that good to begin with) take a backseat for half the time so that Jones can instead prattle on about a small group of uninteresting characters, composed of two women who are constantly objectified and about a dozen men who are constantly objectifying. I guess that's supposed to be funny, but it's not.
Being written by Terry Jones, it had the potential to be very funny, as does anything that is ever worked on by one of the Pythons, but what they say about Monty Python is true. Only about 10% of it is any good, and the rest of it is absolute crap. This book is very much part of the 90%.
funny
lighthearted
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
adventurous
funny
lighthearted
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
From what I've read, this is a novelization of a game where you're exploring a ship on your own. The book has multiple organic characters (including a group of humans), and for the first half of it or so I was both amused and interested in where the plot was going, and generally pleased with how everything was working. The characters had a goal, they worked to get to the goal, great. However, the latter half of the book suffered from that age-old pitfall of multiple characters with different genders pretty much descending into a distracting, chaotic mess of heterosexually pairing up by virtue of existing too closely to each other for too long. I think it took the token human businesswoman about two seconds to fall for the first organic alien lifeform she encountered onboard.
From that point onward, everything just snowballed into a mess of ship fodder. Unfortunately, the publication of this book predates any possible shipping puns that could have been made. While some of it turned out to be a product of a cultural miscommunication that was never pointed out outside of the narration or even viewed as that much of a problem, whenever a book starts to focus on romantic or sexual relationships, I suddenly lose the ability to relate to the narrative entirely. You can throw any kind of alien technology at me and I'll be able to roll with it and go, "Yes, that makes perfect sense, go on and explain the trans-dimensional energy cartridge system now," but the minute characters start coupling up, it turns into a case of "Oh, this old charade again? Bo-ring."
I am mildly curious about the game now, but it seems like nothing I couldn't get from Myst or Beneath a Steel Sky. I'm giving the book three stars because, at least according to whatever approximates as logic for me, everything holds up alright, and the first half even amused me. The back end just wasn't terribly enjoyable for me to slough through.
From that point onward, everything just snowballed into a mess of ship fodder. Unfortunately, the publication of this book predates any possible shipping puns that could have been made. While some of it turned out to be a product of a cultural miscommunication that was never pointed out outside of the narration or even viewed as that much of a problem, whenever a book starts to focus on romantic or sexual relationships, I suddenly lose the ability to relate to the narrative entirely. You can throw any kind of alien technology at me and I'll be able to roll with it and go, "Yes, that makes perfect sense, go on and explain the trans-dimensional energy cartridge system now," but the minute characters start coupling up, it turns into a case of "Oh, this old charade again? Bo-ring."
I am mildly curious about the game now, but it seems like nothing I couldn't get from Myst or Beneath a Steel Sky. I'm giving the book three stars because, at least according to whatever approximates as logic for me, everything holds up alright, and the first half even amused me. The back end just wasn't terribly enjoyable for me to slough through.
adventurous
lighthearted
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
lighthearted
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
N/A
Don't know why but I've been moving this around the country with me since college without reading it. It's ok.