Torment (Planescape) [Englisch] [Taschenbuch]

The book is bad, and far worse than the original computer game. The story in the computer game was mature, sophisticated, complex and intruiging; but the book in most ways seems targetted at 8-14 year olds. The sophisticated story is in conflict with the childish writing.

I had bought the book hoping to have some of the beautiful, dramatic scenes from the game played out in full -- such as the memory from Dionarra's stone, for instance. But the book manages to fit only a (remarkably) small number of events and scenes in its 240 pages, and in an unusual choice it has included the boring events and omitted the dramatic ones.

There is an interesting problem: how on earth can you write a novel in which the main character has no name? The book struggles clumsily with this stylistic problem, eventually naming him "Thane" at the end of chapter 3.

The authors seem to have written it as a 'soap book'. Every single chapter ends on a cliff-hanger, which is invariably resolved within 3/4 of the first page of the new chapter. It gives the book an unexciting tick-tick-tick periodic pace, like a metronome. I can't imagine why they did it.

The book's dialog and characterisation are irritating. The hero, Thane, has been given mind of an awkward, innocent 12-13 year old -- struggling with adolescent falling-in-love, with trying to make sense of the world and other people. This is incongruous given his role in the story. Annah speaks in irritatingly over-the-top Dickensian slang. Dakkon has the speech and mannerisms of a late-20th-century rational liberal humanist.

The book is filled with these things: descriptions of the world as if it were a wholly new thing to Thane as though he were innocent and adolescent; and awkward conversation that expresses over and over again Thane's internal uncertainties.

Thane in the book reminds me a lot of Rincewind from Terry Pratchet's Discworld novels -- because of his adolescence, and because he is an unpowerful character, always running away from things, never having a clue about what is happening or why. He doesn't have any of the remarkable, insightful dialog from the game; when he defeats his nemesis it is by clumsy accident. (Unfortunately this book exhibits none of Pratchet's humour).

To a large extent, the book's dynamics are in accord with its protrayal of the hero: the chapters and events sweep past, with the hero an impotent and perplexed participant, passive. The reader is also perplexed and impotent. The book's 17 events (one per chapter!) are like a fairground ride going past different scenery -- neither the hero nor the reader have no idea why, or how, or what comes next, and nor can they really engage with the events or shape them.

A lot of fun.