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A review by tiggum
Vampirium by Joe Dever, Brian Williams
1.0
This is some lazy bullshit. The whole thing is just a long-winded setup for the next (and final) book that doesn't even manage to pique my interest in that book. On top of that, it barely even pretends to be a gamebook and there aren't any vampires in it. There's a sort-of vampire-like antagonist, but it's Sejanoz and his name being in the title of the next book should tell you how satisfying the confrontation with him in this book ends up being.
Basically, this book fails to live up to every one of its promises and really gives the impression of an author who just didn't want to be writing this series any more and was long out of fucks to give for his fans or the quality of his work. For all their faults, the earlier books at least give the impression that the author cared about them. This one does not. It feels like a contractual obligation. Maybe it was.
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The collector's edition bonus adventure is actually worse. Shadow Stalkers is an unmitigated disaster of a book. An insult to anyone who bought it or even read it. Apparently it was originally written in French so I don't know how much blame to lay at the feet of the author (Florent Haro) and how much to assign to the translators (Charlotte Sarrau, Naomi Taylor and Vincent Lazzari) but there's more than enough to go around - and the proofreaders (Naomi Taylor and Vincent Lazzari again, with Andreas Andreou and Paul Gresty) are due their share as well.
It's notable that, with eight people credited in its creation, not one of them is listed as an editor. And this book needed one. Badly. It's a fucking slog. And full of errors - both of the type the four proofreaders should have caught, and errors in the game logic. What little of that there is.
Which leads to my next point of contention, which is that there are barely any decisions to make in this entire book, and those that do exist are frequently meaningless. It's clear that Haro had no actual interest in writing a gamebook. He badly wanted to write a novel, and badly write a novel he did.
I cannot overstate it. This is a piece of absolute shit.
Basically, this book fails to live up to every one of its promises and really gives the impression of an author who just didn't want to be writing this series any more and was long out of fucks to give for his fans or the quality of his work. For all their faults, the earlier books at least give the impression that the author cared about them. This one does not. It feels like a contractual obligation. Maybe it was.
---
The collector's edition bonus adventure is actually worse. Shadow Stalkers is an unmitigated disaster of a book. An insult to anyone who bought it or even read it. Apparently it was originally written in French so I don't know how much blame to lay at the feet of the author (Florent Haro) and how much to assign to the translators (Charlotte Sarrau, Naomi Taylor and Vincent Lazzari) but there's more than enough to go around - and the proofreaders (Naomi Taylor and Vincent Lazzari again, with Andreas Andreou and Paul Gresty) are due their share as well.
It's notable that, with eight people credited in its creation, not one of them is listed as an editor. And this book needed one. Badly. It's a fucking slog. And full of errors - both of the type the four proofreaders should have caught, and errors in the game logic. What little of that there is.
Which leads to my next point of contention, which is that there are barely any decisions to make in this entire book, and those that do exist are frequently meaningless. It's clear that Haro had no actual interest in writing a gamebook. He badly wanted to write a novel, and badly write a novel he did.
I cannot overstate it. This is a piece of absolute shit.