The Broken World by Tim Etchells (UK / US), is written as a video-game "walkthrough", which is someone describing how you can find you way through a game, past the challenges, how to complete the levels etc. It's written first person, and blog-style, the novel is a blog, the scenes are short and blog-post like, the language slang and sweary, the typography flicking to CAPITALS randomly because of a sticky CAPSLOCK key.At first I wondered, why I should care about a videogame I'll never play? Why should I follow the path through First Town and want to know how to beat the zombies? But the writing is easy to read and swallowed me in, the narrator is likeable, if not a little stupid and obsessed, but I was willing to go easy on him and see where it went. Slowly more personal details are slipped into the blog. Until suddenly and quite unexpectedly you care about the narrator. It's similar in some ways to Microserfs in which an accumulation of what initially appear minor details builds up and up and suddenly they are more than the sum of their parts and you care about the characters. In fact the writing in general reminded me a lot of Douglas Coupland, and The Broken World is the book that I wanted JPod to be.
The narrator is undoubtedly a slacker, and quite stupid at times. I knew that his girlfriend was getting fed up, even when he didn't. But his (the narrator's) focus is on the game, The Broken World, which is an all encompassing marvel of a world. And this is where the book stands out as different to others of the genre, because not only do we have a story of the the narrator, but we have the in-game story, the story of our heroes Ray and Rachel. And The Broken World itself, an entire creation, with it's wonderful crazy, varied levels and impossible interaction. Except maybe it's not impossible, because at times I wasn't sure if the game allowed you to do seemingly impossible things or whether the player was imagining them, projecting their actions and emotions.
The journey through the game also mirrors the narrator's journey. There are times when he makes comments about the game, that are clearly representitive of the real world too, although he doesn't see it, for example that the game is cruel and unfair, or random. There's an ongoing analogy, or mirror, between reality and the game, obvious to the reader, but not the narrator.
There are levels on the game that sounded so wonderful I want to play them, particularily The Empty Level. The descriptions and passions are infectious. There's Science Fiction and Fantasy and Horror and a cinematic story that reminds me of the first time I played a game with a cut-scene, and the astonishing realisation that I was playing a story. The Broken World is a story about someone playing a story.
I devoured the book rapidly, one of those I carried around with me, just in case I got five minutes, and by the end I cared about the characters a lot, both the real ones and the game's ones.
Wonderful stuff.
If you're looking for full-on SF, this isn't it, but if you want a character driven story entwined with a crazy SF/Fantasy videogame, then you're in luck! I highly recommend it.
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