'Shadowkeep' – Alan Dean Foster (Target)

This was going to be Saturday's 'Retro' post but I was looking after my daughters and when I wasn't looking after my daughters I was binging on 'Stan Against Evil' so you can see why not a lot happened on Saturday. It was good though, how was your weekend? Anyway...

So last weekend I was saying how film tie-in books were great for a boy like me who didn't go to the pictures as much as he wanted to.Turns out that movies weren't the only media to get the 'novelisation' treatment, computer games had their turn as well. Well 'Shadowkeep' did, a 1984 role playing game that completely passed me by at the time (as did most computer games until the mid to late eighties). I can't quite remember where I found my copy of the book (given the location of the annual family holiday, I've narrowed it down to Norfolk...) but I can remember enjoying it as a kid. I can also remember it ending up in a charity shop and a recent bout of nostalgia encouraged me to seek out another copy.

Dear reader, sometimes memories should remain exactly that. Don't go back, it's never as nice as you remember...

It's round about now that I'd copy and paste a little blurb for you to get a feel for what the book is about (and also because I'm a little bit lazy these days and can't find it in me to do a bit of paraphrasing). I'm not going to do that today though as this book is so easy to sum up that even I, in my slightly bleary eyed state, can do it.

Blacksmith's apprentice Practor Fime has been tasked with entering the castle of Shadowkeep and defeating the demon king that lurks within. With a group of unlikely accquaintances, Practor gains entrance to the castle but will they live long enough to face the demon king...?

I've got to start picking some more engaging books to read otherwise this blog won't last long... That's not quite true, this blog is definitely going to be a long term thing but I do hope that my next read has more to offer than 'Shadowkeep'...

Having read it again, I can see why my younger self enjoyed 'Shadowkeep' with its approach of having regular small doses of action keep the plot moving along. That was more than enough to keep me engaged back in the day. Today though... Today I need more than that and 'Shadowkeep' doesn't deliver.

In a way, 'Shadowkeep' is hamstrung before it starts as its original source material is leaned on a little too heavily by the author who writes his story as if he is playing the game and writing down what happens. What the reader gets then is all the tedious bits of a dungeon crawl; enter a room, solve puzzle, defeat monster and move on to the next room to complete the same process all over again. It's dull, that's all there is to it. Practor Fime has a little going for him in terms of character but we're not really here to root for him or his friends. No, we're here to watch him and his friends 'solve' the dungeon almost by accident, sometimes, and leaves us with two dimensional characters who, if I'm anything to go by, you will have trouble remembering who they are after you put the book down.

I'm having trouble working out whether this books inability to engage with me is down to it's insistence on working to the failings of the game that it's based on or whether Alan Dean Foster fell on the wrong side of 'show don't tell' (this isn't the first book of his that I've actively found to be dull). I have a horrible feeling that it's a little bit of both.

If you're a fan of Alan Dean Foster's work, or have a working copy of the game then I can see this book working for me. Me personally though? Pick up anything else, please? I guarantee that you won't miss anything by not reading 'Shadowkeep' (except possibly some hints to solve the game but even that's not worth it). I actually tried to sleep on the bus rather than read this...