Some time ago in my review of a book based on Assassin’s Creed, I said that maybe video games shouldn’t be turned into books.  I may have been a little hasty in that opinion.  Alan Wake is kind of a poor man’s Duma Key, but I really like this book a lot better than that simmering Stephen King concoction.

Alan Wake is a bestselling novelist who has come down with a serious case of writer’s block.  Unable to write beyond the title of his next intended novel, his wife, Alice, arranges a vacation for the two of them.  Alan and Alice rent a cabin in the bucolic Bright Falls, a small town in the Pacific Northwest.  Their cabin sits on a little island in Cauldron Lake.  Alice is hoping the change of scenery from the fast paced life of NYC will help to snap Alan out of whatever has made him irritable, hostile, and unable to work.  If the surrounding wilderness and lake do not help, she has secretly booked Alan an appointment with a local doctor whose specialty is treating “artist types”.

Some strange experiences greet the couple as they arrive at Bright Falls, and, if the odd locals weren’t enough to give Alan the heebie-jeebies, the impression of menace and dread he gets from the environment has him ready to run.  What his wife thought would calm and relax him only fills him with apprehension and menace.  These feelings are solidified when, after an argument in which Alan goes for a walk to cool off, Alice just doesn’t go missing– she vanishes into Cauldron Lake.  Taken by something.  Taken by the Darkness.

Bright Falls is a cursed town, dating back several decades.  The Darkness that lives in the lake is able to make special use of those “artist types”, allowing it to gather strength and overtake the citizens of Bright Falls.  As it tries to use Alan, by making what he writes real, he tries to manipulate it to save his wife.  If Alice is really still alive, that is.

Alan Wake only barely falls into zombie lit, but it makes good use of that sub-genre’s conventions.  As it does also of vampires, seeing as those taken by the Darkness are weakened by light.  This story borrows the best parts of some of the horror and thriller elements and weaves them into a killer romp through the woods and around the town Bright Falls.  It’s fresh and familiar at the same time.

I don’t how much of this novelization is from the creative time behind the video game, or how much is writer Rick Burroughs.  I don’t care.  Burroughs has done a stellar job of adapting this property, and I would like to read more of his work, be it Alan Wake related or not.  Rick Burroughs has written a spellbinding, atmospheric, and engaging novel with Alan Wake, and I highly recommend it.  If you want an escape, or just a good, fun, read, seek it out.

4.5 out of 5
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