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Jump to navigationJump to searchA Confusion of Princes by Garth Nix (view source)
Revision as of 11:02, 14 May 2012
, 11:02, 14 May 2012no edit summary
I'm glad Garth Nix has offered us a stand-alone read, for it gives me a chance to examine his output with less commitment than to a series. But the flipside to that here is that this was a novel designed to fit into the universe of a Facebook game, and a basic google search says this was due in 2009... 'Hmmm', I'm thinking.
And a lot of this reads like a game-based (or at least a game-aware) book. Khemri spends a lot of his time in military training, as befits a Prince facing up to 'You Might Be Powerful But No Way Can You Live As You Would Wish 101'. As a result you see him tally up his demerits due to his maverick side, as well as his ambitions to get more ammo; and he quite blatantly powers up and levels up with more priests and weapons here and there. When he is advised to ""''establish more relay points to the Imperial Mind"" '' you see 'points' as having a blatant double-meaning. Later, there's a chess-like minigame for him to play to gain shelter in one pickle.
But don't get me wrong, I like the fictional creativity involved in gaming, and have no problems with cross-media pollination of ideas, tropes and talent. Also, this is not at all a fictionalised account of a player's game career, nor a prologue. It is simply set in the same universe, and both seem very independent. There are still flaws here in that too much of this is a linear progression for Khemri, much as the game would entail, however well-disguised with setbacks, boss battles and fast-forwarded boring bits of his life.
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[[Category:Confident Readers]]
[[Category:Science Fiction]]
