The 7th Guest (novel)
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.
Personal
Wanting to delve deeper into The 7th Guest universe, I found the book for cheap online and bought it. I wasn't expecting much, and I didn't get much from it.
I finished it on 2022-11-25.
Review
Good
- The novel follows the source material very closely, even including verbatim passages from the live action cut scenes. I prefer this to novelizations which significantly alter the source material.
Bad
- The writing is not very professional. 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 editing.
- The story is spoon-fed to the reader. The game is a bit too vague at times, and the out-of-order vignettes makes 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 very clear, then repeats it a few more times.
- 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, which doesn't make sense because it's describing the actual events of the book. This fits with the game's docutation which takes place years after the events, but not the story.
Ugly
- Nothing.
Media
Hardcover - USA - 1st edition.
Representation
Links
