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A review by talysalankil
Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood by Oliver Bowden
2.0
Full review on my blog, the Snark Theater.
This is a case of a bad adaptation. The book tries its best to recreate the game's feeling of freedom, which is completely pointless because this is a book, which, by essence, is linear. Instead, it ends up feeling very confused, where plot lines are started, then given up on, then taken back, on a regular basis. At the same time, the pacing feels a little forced sometimes: while a game can outright tell the player where to go to progress the story, a book should be more subtle about it. This book isn't.
I'm also a bit skeptical about the way the book expands the ending of the game, filling in the time skip before the last mission. It felt both like padding, and rushed at the same time, and ended up making the climax of the book very anticlimactic.
To summarize, I'll just quote my old review: "And that… is the feeling the book as a whole left me. Forced. The story was forced from one medium to the other, with little to no concern for the end result."
I also need to question the novel's abandoning the most interesting plot line of the games (namely, the present day plot, following Desmond&co.). The games are unique for two reasons: one is the sandbox aspect, the other is that plot line. Neither are present in the book, leaving it mostly pointless.
This is a case of a bad adaptation. The book tries its best to recreate the game's feeling of freedom, which is completely pointless because this is a book, which, by essence, is linear. Instead, it ends up feeling very confused, where plot lines are started, then given up on, then taken back, on a regular basis. At the same time, the pacing feels a little forced sometimes: while a game can outright tell the player where to go to progress the story, a book should be more subtle about it. This book isn't.
I'm also a bit skeptical about the way the book expands the ending of the game, filling in the time skip before the last mission. It felt both like padding, and rushed at the same time, and ended up making the climax of the book very anticlimactic.
To summarize, I'll just quote my old review: "And that… is the feeling the book as a whole left me. Forced. The story was forced from one medium to the other, with little to no concern for the end result."
I also need to question the novel's abandoning the most interesting plot line of the games (namely, the present day plot, following Desmond&co.). The games are unique for two reasons: one is the sandbox aspect, the other is that plot line. Neither are present in the book, leaving it mostly pointless.