Book Review
2011-05-02
by Darknut
King's Quest: The Book
1995 by Craig Mills
The cover is rather foreboding...Verdict: 
Would be fanfic without the official seal of approval.
I love used bookstores because otherwise I'd never come across this stuff. I knew this was going to be garbage when I bought it. But it has the official blessing of King's Quest right on the cover, so no matter how bad it was, how could I resist witnessing the horror with my own eyes? It's a lot like that time you discovered those half-assed, half-licensed Nintendo games that came out on the CD-i. (What? You mean there are three titles in your beloved Zelda series that you've never played? Normally I'd say you should get off your lazy ass and actually play them, but this time, let's just watch a YouTube video and say we did. Because you might need to kill yourself afterwards.) Yeah, reading this book was just like that.
Apparently this story takes place between King's Quest 5 and 6 because Prince Alexander is wearing the fancy-pants getup from King's Quest 6, yet there's no trace of Princess Cassima. The choice of logo is also a giveaway. Incidentally, the description of Castle Daventry sounds much like the depiction in the 1990 version of King's Quest 1.
Okay, I'll get to the bottom line. The events that take place are slightly interesting, admittedly perhaps only if you're already familiar with Prince Alexander and the other characters. But the execution—the writing, that is—feels like it came out of a 15-year-old. The author struggles through a limited vocabulary of clichés, unaware that they make a poor substitute for earnest, original description.
It doesn't help that I read The Tough Guide to Fantasyland just before this. I grimaced when one of the characters mentioned how he'd like a bath (see BATH). See also APPRENTICE, CRONE, DARK LORD, HARDSHIP, PRINCESS, SOUL, and WAYBREAD.
The good guys are good. Goody-two-shoes kind of good. The kindly but incompetent old guard at the front gate is to be pitied when the DARK LORD shoves him aside, for no reason other than that it's traditional to do so.
The bad guys are evil. Ridiculously evil for no apparent reason. At least in John Moore's Heroics for Beginners, when the DARK LORD laughs maniacally in front of his victims, it's supposed to be funny for the reader, not just awkward.
The throwaway characters are quite easily forgotten. If your whole presentation rests upon character development in order to construct a "believable" fantasy world, shouldn't you give the impression that some of your characters might exist outside of the few pages they fill?
I don't understand the obsessive focus on describing the increments of travel through ordinary countryside and the contents of each meal. OK, the first Harry Potter book is obsessed with food, too, but that was forgiveable because (1) the food was otherworldly, (2) Harry had never eaten so well before, and (3) Rowling's a good writer. But why does this book need so much facetious explanation for the mysterious, slow-motion process of walking down a hallway? There's also a piteous attempt to make the experience of waking up somehow interesting, each time it happens. Why is this supposed to be captivating? Yawwwn. And we're constantly reminded of how tired and exhausted Prince Alexander is, since he has to walk everywhere and sleep on the ground. You'd think he'd be used to it since he lives in this world of medieval inconvenience all the time. Unless perhaps the secret message behind this story is about how princes shouldn't be so spoiled. Ironically, despite all the effort, I didn't feel like the whole "roughing it" experience was really conveyed. It was more like the author had never been outside yet loved to fantasize about what it must be like, and this lead to the invention of awkward, inaccurate ways of describing the act of existing in the world.
At least the focus on finding objects and using them to get past obstacles was a bit reminiscent of playing those old games, though I'm not sure whether this was the author's intent.
Anyway, I would like to say that despite how the writing was crappy, I was still able to enjoy it on a personal level because of all my King's Quest experiences. Well, actually he botched that, too, because in chapter 17, Alexander has mysteriously forgotten all about his own experience using magic (from King's Quest 3), even though it was briefly referenced earlier in the book! Sigh. But the sad part is: I still wish there were more. Apparently I crave additional points of entry into the King's Quest world in order to reaffirm its existence (see Jesse Schell's The Art of Game Design, chapter 17). Even if they're in the form of fucked-up, forgettable, adolescent fan-fiction.
At least it wasn't as bad as that Doom book. I think.
Another time I'll have to talk about some books related to computer games that didn't suck.
