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Alan Wake (2010)

by Rick Burroughs(Favorite Author)

4.27 of 5 Votes: 5

ISBN

0765328437 (ISBN13: 9780765328434)

languge

English

genre

Horror

publisher

Tor Books

review 1: Alan Wake, which hit was published on the Xbox 360 in 2010, was one of those games that made me sit up and pay attention. From its initial announcement years earlier through to the game’s publication, I was hooked. Having little experience with survival horror in games, but being a veteran reader of Stephen King and a newbie Lovecraft nerd, it stood out from the crowd. Alan, the titular hero, isn’t a muscular, taciturn, grimdark gunbro; he’s a depressed, anxious writer. Its villains aren’t zombies or terrorists; they’re painfully familiar locals who have been possessed by an ancient power. Its setting is uncomfortably familiar, too: a tiny mountain town. Alan Wake is one of those rare high points of this console generation that just didn’t get enough love. Stil... morel, it’s one of my favorite games, and I was so, so excited to get a chance to review the tie-in novel that Tor Books sent me. How does author Rick Burroughs’s freshman novel live up to the blockbuster horror game? Read on to find out.A foreward note: It should come as no surprise that we’re going to be covering Alan Wake on the Games as Lit podcast. While we have yet to record that episode, I simply couldn’t hold myself back from writing about the book. Having read more than a dozen videogame novels in the last year, there have been only one or two others that have gripped me with the same ferocity that Burroughs’ book did. This is as pitch-perfect a companion to the game as I can imagine; indeed, I think it’s an all-around superior novel. This is as good as it gets as a gateway into supernatural horror writers like King, Kuntz, and Barker.Structurally, the game and novel share much in common. It opens with Wake’s nightmare, wherein he hits a hitchhiker and is then attacked by a shadow-cloaked man, and finally rescued by a light-wreathed diver who carries a message for him. It’s an interesting, in-media-res beginning that leaves readers wondering what’s going on, but it also foreshadows the later horror of the book, and opens the metanarrative with gusto (more on that later). Wake wakes up to find himself crossing into Bright Falls, Washington, with his wife, Alice. She’s beautiful and patient, cheery on the opposite end of the spectrum from Alan’s brooding funk. Where he sees inconvenience and something approaching barbarian custom in the town’s celebration of “Deer Fest,” Alice finds only healthy charm. This vacation set-up is matched step for turn in the game, and from here on out, the majority of the game and novel narratives are identical. For some readers, this might be a letdown; those hoping for an experimental “expansion” on the game’s already heady meta-narrative won’t find it here. Instead, what you’ll find is a fleshed out, intelligent companion to the game’s longer, more combat-oriented campaign. However, it would be unwise to write this off as a repeat of Will Dietz’s Halo: The Flood, which does little to distinguish itself from the game.Burroughs has not merely converted the script of the game over to prose. Though there are marked similarities, there is an intelligent and loving treatment applied here, and evidence abounds. Consider the different needs of the two versions of Alan Wake: the game needs to keep the players engaged and dramatically in danger, so certain elements of the horror--like creeping suspense--are often disvalued or lost altogether, in favor of jump scares and lots of gun-toting combat; dialogue takes second-seat to danger. Not so in the book; here, Wake’s terse, angry interactions with those surrounding the disappearance/death/mystery of his wife, and the Weird goings-on around Bright Falls takes front and center. A focus on combat wouldn’t work in the book, and so characterization steps in to fill the void. Wake, while often alone in the book, more often than not has a companion. This is a big divergence from the end of the game, where Wake must sally forth on his own, but the abundance of company help round the book out throughout.I was hugely impressed with the character written into the dialogue. Though many lines are lifted directly from the game’s script, Burroughs adds on some much-needed gloss to build out the story, particularly when Wake is interacting with characters like Barry, and Sheriff Breaker. Barry, Wake’s enthusiastic and over-the-top literary agent receives the loving touch of good humor. Sheriff Breaker, the tough-as-nails top cop of Bright Falls, receives enough new dialogue and interaction with Wake to fill her out as more than just a point of authority. The craft with which Burroughs’ ideas are melded to those of the game proper is remarkable, and as an adaptation of the game, he ought to be commended.But writing a videogame-based novel is not as simple as building out the dialogue and descriptions to swell the word count: the tone and atmosphere of the novel must be simulated, too, or the entire affair will fall apart (as it did in Assassin’s Creed: The Secret Crusade). Indeed, writing a novel based on Alan Wake must have been doubly difficult, because throughout the game there are discarded scraps of the character’s own writing, which, due to the meta-narrative of the story (we’re getting to that), must form the foundation of the language of the book. Wake is criticized several times as a writer for having “too much dialogue” and “too many metaphors” throughout the course of the game, and I found very satisfying that Burroughs was able to ‘write like Wake.’ The language is both dialogue-heavy and metaphor-heavy, to a wonderful effect. Like the discarded manuscript pages players of the game are tasked with collecting, Burrough’s sentences are often clipped, terse, and packed with killer imagery. Again, the lock-step performance of the adaptation alongside the book is perfect. Included, too, at the end of each chapter is one or another of the game’s many manuscript pages. Often they seem unrelated to the events as they’re happening, but they do serve to build out the greater happenings around Bright Falls, including the effect of the Taken (the possessed enemies) on the locals.Burroughs’ prose, which is both gripping and horrifying, is always at its best right before and after Wake engages with the Taken. While the game pits the player with killing dozens and hundreds of the possessed Taken, the literary Wake kills only a few; each of these weigh heavily on him, especially as Burroughs turns up the personality. While we never spend any real time with Stucky, the first Taken whom Wake kills, we do see a fair amount of discourse between Wake and Rusty, and many others. This makes the creepy-crawly feeling of knowing you’re going to be attacked all the more poignant, and Wake’s recognition of the dead men he is fighting makes the combat that much more horrific. The darkness that pervades the book is as thick oil, and it keeps the whole story well-greased. Every time Alan is in danger, you are, too. That it handles both combat and the horror better than the game is a true achievement; I felt nervous while I played the game, but Burroughs’ silent construction of terror is far more powerful to me as a reader.The tone the author strikes helps build out the meta-narrative, too. Alan Wake is a novel about a writer’s struggle with a supernatural evil, which he must write about in order to fight. The narrative traces Wake’s determined march to save his wife from the clutches of a Lovecraftian Other Thing, a force that Wake calls the ‘Dark Presence’ and that subsists on the creative energies of artists. In the ‘real world,’ the stories captive artists construct emerge as real, but twisted and grotesque; they power the Dark Presence, which receives little characterization in the game. Burroughs handles it more tactfully, I think, reminding the reader constantly that it isn’t just dark outside: the darkness is manifest outside, waiting for your lights to blow so it can get at you. The meta-narrative contained within the story, linking Alan Wake and Thomas Zane, both writers whom the Dark Presence sought to feed off of, is well-handled. Alan Wake is about Alan Wake writing about Alan Wake so he can free himself and his wife. In order to do that, Wake must write about Wake freeing himself. It’s circular at best, and ouroboric at worst.Burroughs is well-aware of that function of the game, though, for there are paragraphs sprinkled throughout that don’t quite belong, detailing a different timeline, as if the book’s channel has been tuned slightly off-key and we’re getting a contextless, sudden glimpse into some weird pocket-world where Wake is stuck over a typewriter. These clues build up to excellent fruition, but to sally on in that regard would spoil too much.I’m really looking forward to recording the Alan Wake episode of the podcast in a way that I haven’t for many of the other episodes. Game tie-ins and spin-offs can be plodding, pointless, and offensive. They’re rarely sensitive, gripping, genuinely funny, and damned good reads. To be frank? I’d put recommend the book over the game; they go good together, but the book is just superior. It has excellent prose, a clear sense of self, and a slightly-expanded narrative that builds well on the back of the game. Its characters are fully-realized and its pacing is perfect. Burroughs’ treatment really is a remarkable feat, so if you’re a thriller or horror fan, this one’s for you: horror can be done well on the console, and horror games, it seems, can have meaningful, frightening stories.
review 2: I really wanted to like this book. It's based on the video game...well, actually IS the video game, so if you've played the game, then you've read the book. In fact, while I was playing, I was thinking to myself "wow, this would make a great book!"It's why I was interested in reading the book. I just don't have as much time to play games as I'd like, and really wanted to know how this turned out, so I was pleased that there was a book.Well, it turns out the game was better. The book should have been better, but the writing is really terrible. The way the author moves from one thing to another is choppy, and it doesn't really make sense...take this passage for instance, keeping in mind that Alan Wake is BEHIND bars. I've read the previous pages several times to make sure that nothing was said about him leaving the jail cell."The Dark Presence roared through the darkness, drowning out Nightingale's voice, deafening them all. it grabbed nightingale, jerked him off his feet and down the hallway, bursting through the door to the outside and carrying him off into the night. The manuscript pages fluttered slowly to the floor.Suddenly there was a piercing sound, like guitar feedback, and Sarah thought of Barry Wheeler talking about him and Alan onstage last night -- he said they were like rock gods as they fought the Taken. Sarah's smile faded as hundreds of birds made out of shadows flapped out of the night, hundreds of ravens swarming into the rotor of the helicopter.The chopper bucked wildly and the control panel lit up, telling her what she already knew: they were going down. Wheeler screamed next to her. She glanced over at Alan. He looked back at her, jaws clamped as he hung on."Huh?? When did he escape bars, when did they get into a helicopter? This happens a lot more than just this instance. It's an instance of where things are explained in a video game cut-scene that just didn't get written well.Richard Burroughs as the potential to be a good author, but he needs a better editor. Pacing and continuity are two huge things that he needed help with. less

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