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pereki: the blog

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Bonkle the Book: Not Written by Greg Edition


emily

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All those years back my family would make the drive up to a bigger town every Sunday, to go to Barnes and Noble, get some drinks from the cafe, and read. And so every Sunday I'd head back to the children's section and search for the next BIONICLE novel. Usually I'd have to settle for something else, but those special days that the BIONICLE world expanded just a little were always my favorite.

Today I don't really have the luxury of the serendipity of discovery like I did then. I knew Island of Lost Masks was coming long before it did, and I knew that I would be reading it the same day. I did make the attempt to stop by Barnes and Noble to pick up a physical copy, but they haven't got their shipment in yet. That's just how it goes, I guess.

After 5 solid years of Farshtey its exciting to have a new author. If I'm being honest than Windham's writing history hasn't exactly inspired much confidence in me, but I've tried to go into this with as much of an open mind as I can.

The first and probably most important thing that I want to bring up: I really, cannot thank Windham enough for maintaining consistency with the online episodes. I realize that for a lot of people that's probably a disappointment; a repeat of the same story content instead of something new. But I can't tell you enough how much I prefer that to the alternative that Greg (and Hapka)'s books opted with: making their own narrative at the expense of a coherent continuity. For example, Greg's depiction of this short differs fundamentally from the source material on enough points that he may as well have not referenced it at all. I get that he wants to do his own thing, but him doing his own thing at the expense of story coherence was really frustrating for me. Windham does not do this. He keeps true to what we've seen. And I deeply appreciate that.

What is more, Windham does put forth the effort to make sure the characters are depicted consistent to their characterization in the episodes. We have a fumbling Kopaka too proud to admit his mistakes, a joke-cracking Lewa, an objective-driven Gali, and so forth. I didn't always feel his writing was quite up to the mark (Onua fumbling about Korgot being a girl got to be a little too verbose for him in my opinion), the effort is clearly there and, really, that's all that I expect of him as someone newly inducted into the BIONICLE mythos.

The writing style is simple and straightforward, which is more or less to be expected from someone coming off of writing tens of Star Wars readers. It does the job well enough. I liked that some of the Protector's speech came across as more formal without being detached, echoing the style that MNOG often followed. Windham's got a nice sense of humor too, Greg's jokes never really hit me the right way but a few of Windham's original passages have genuinely laugh-out-loud moments.

In general, I think it is a good start that has potential. The book doesn't strike nearly as hard as the online episodes, but then, it is an adaption - Windham is taking something that wasn't made for the novel medium and trying to get it to fit. I think the true test will come this winter with Revenge of the Skull Spiders, which, if the alignment of the stars hold true, will be an original story and Windham's first real chance to dig into the world and do things his own way.

Before that though, he's got another BIONICLE writing debut coming up in the form of the first graphic novel - which is looking to be another retelling of the episodes. It will be interesting to see how Windham goes about attempting to breathe a unique life into them for a second time. He's certainly got his work set out for him.

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