The 7th Guest (novel)

Hardcover, 1st edition.

The 7th Guest: A Novel is a horror novel written by Matthew Costello and Craig Shaw Gardner and released on 1995-07-19. It is the novelization of the video game The 7th Guest. Costello wrote the script for the video game, and his plot was novelized by Gardner. The book

Personal

Own?	Hardcover, USA, 1st edition.
Read?	Hardcover, USA, 1st edition.
Finished	2022-11-25

Wanting to delve deeper into The 7th Guest universe, I found the book for cheap online and bought it. I wasn't expecting much from it, and that's what I got.

Review

Overall:

— This section contains spoilers! —

Good

• The novel follows the source material very closely, even including verbatim passages from the live action cut scenes, but also adds a lot more backstory to each of the guests. I prefer this approach to novelizations compared to those which significantly alter the source material.

Bad

• Although I like that the book uses the game's dialogue, it also describes the puzzles and many of the supernatural events, most of which have little to do with plot, so they just slow down the story.
• The book includes the nursery rhyme about the guests being invited to the house and disappearing, but it's altered to use "seven" guests and is known to Tad as a boy. This doesn't make sense as it's describing the actual events Tad is taking part in. It would have made more sense if the novel incorporated the investigation from the game's documentation which occurs after the "party," but the investigation isn't included in the book at all.

The book is meant to follow the time loop theme of the game with the ghost of Tad finally breaking the cycle, but there is only a brief interlude with Tad's ghost until the very end when he shows up again. All of the commentary of Tad's ghost during the vignettes is absent. It feels like it wasn't meant to be part of the novel at first, but then was added at the last minute.

Ugly

• The writing is not very polished. I don't know if this was due to a hurried release, having two authors, or what, but it feels amateur through the whole book. The eerie scenes from the game have been neutered by bland descriptions. There are also a handful of typos which shows a lack of proper editing. It feels more like we're reading a draft than a finished work.
• The story is spoon-fed to the reader. The game is a bit vague at times, and the vignettes that often take place out-of-order make it harder to follow the time line, but the book describes the plot in unnecessary detail. For example, in the game, it's pretty obvious that Stauff captured the children's souls in his toys, but the book takes an entire page to make this explicitly clear, then repeats it a few more times in later chapters.

Media

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  Hardcover - USA - 1st edition.

Representation

Strong female character?	Pass	Elinor Knox shows growth and a strong desire to break out of her old life and help someone. The other two don't show growth, but are still both willing to do what it takes to achieve their dreams, even if it means being evil.
Bechdel test?	Fail	There are several women, but they never talk to each other.
Strong person of color character?	{{{StrongPOCCharacterStatus}}}	{{{StrongPOCCharacterNotes}}}
Queer character?	Fail	None of the characters appear to be queer.

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