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A review by neilazaara
Puzzle House by Duncan Ralston
adventurous
dark
mysterious
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
2.0
It started off so well… I liked the introduction to the characters and the writing style. But as soon as we got into the puzzle house, everything became long descriptions of every action that is taken by each character to solve a puzzle without giving the reader the possibility to have a guess at solving the puzzle. This is often an issue with escape room types of books where the idea and the puzzles could even be interesting but when a book is written from a first person perspective then the reader can’t know more than the character at any given time. This makes it impossible to try to figure out the riddle or puzzle and if that’s the case then what is the point of reading an escape room book? It ends up being one character giving you the countdown, one telling you here is a keyhole and here is the door and here is a box and then we get a long winded answer as to why the answer is some Babylonian god and the box opens, one character gets the key and open the door. And do it again about 6 times. Because of the structure of this book and its own premise, it backed itself into a corner not allowing for neither the joy of solving a puzzle nor the tension of someone potentially dying or not making it out alive because each puzzle is meant to be for one person to be left behind… It is painfully clear who will be next and therefore I can’t care for their lives especially as I didn’t have time to get to know properly any of the characters.
Another thing that is often the issue with this type of horror “games” is that the author can’t stick the landing. It seems like there was no endgame or direction and things are just cut off abruptly leaving you to wonder what was the point of what I just read. It’s not even about it always needed a bigger picture or a big plot against humanity but at least some type of ending whether it’s an open ending or a closed one would be appreciated. This one made me feel as if the author got kinda bored or tired and send out to publishing the draft without writing the last two chapters.
Overall, the writing style itself isn’t bad and I quite liked the characters, but the plot, storytelling, lack of tension and the ending just chipped away at my rating until we came to a 2 because I felt like in the end I wasted my time.
Another thing that is often the issue with this type of horror “games” is that the author can’t stick the landing. It seems like there was no endgame or direction and things are just cut off abruptly leaving you to wonder what was the point of what I just read. It’s not even about it always needed a bigger picture or a big plot against humanity but at least some type of ending whether it’s an open ending or a closed one would be appreciated. This one made me feel as if the author got kinda bored or tired and send out to publishing the draft without writing the last two chapters.
Overall, the writing style itself isn’t bad and I quite liked the characters, but the plot, storytelling, lack of tension and the ending just chipped away at my rating until we came to a 2 because I felt like in the end I wasted my time.