I enjoy video games.  Some of the movies based on video games, not so much.  I think the only good Resident Evil movie was the last one.  I don’t like those old Mortal Kombat movies.  I liked the Silent Hill movie.  There is a considerable number of people out there in the world, both critics and fans alike, who think video games should not be made into movies.  Assassin’s Creed:  Renaissance argues that maybe they shouldn’t be made into novels either.

Dig it:  the Renaissance.  In 1476 Florence, Italy, Giovanni Auditore is a banker.  He is rivals with the Pazzi clan, another banking family.  Finance is dangerous in Fifteenth Century Italy, so dangerous and treacherous that the Auditore and Pazzi kids fight each other; they have their own gangs and go to war on the streets.  When Giovanni and his oldest and youngest sons are arrested and hanged at the gallows as traitors, its middle son, Ezio, who takes up the task of vengeance.  Just as soon as he makes sure his mother and sister, and their housekeeper, are safely hidden away.

The housekeeper’s sister, Paola, a madam, hides Ezio at her brothel and trains him.  Trains him to be a better assassin, you dirty bird.  That’s right, the whore teaches him to hide better, to be lost in the crowd.  It does Ezio a world of good, because he avenges his father and brothers.

But there is still over three hundred pages to go before the book ends.

Assassin’s Creed:  Renaissance is filled with plenty of action, but it’s mindless, it has no context.  Ezio’s adventures are repetitious.  My God! it’s awful!  The story spans years, but days and weeks and years jump ahead from one paragraph to the next.  There is no excitement, no flair, no reason to read this book.  There is no reason for it to be 472 pages!

You want cookie-cutter characters?  It’s here.  You want simplistic descriptions, dialogue, and poor writing?  It’s got them all.  The plot is too cluttered with barely sketched characters; the story too tedious.  Somehow the Templar Knights are behind everything, and Ezio seeks to destroy them.  You see, Ezio’s dad wasn’t just a banker, he was an assassin too, and they had him killed, or something, it doesn’t matter, I don’t care.  After he kills, rummaging through his enemies’ personal belongings, Ezio, more often than not, finds lost pages of the Assassin’s Codex!  A reward!  It works in video games, but not here.  And Ezio befriends Leonardo da Vinci.  Leo is probably more infuriated about being associated with this book than with Dan Brown’s travesty.

If you read this book, you’re just going to get screwed.  But if you do read Renaissance, hopefully you’ll enjoy the laughable dialogue.  “Welcome to the headquarters of the Guild of Professional Thieves and Whoremongers of Venice.  But of course we only steal from the rich to give to the poor, and of course our whores prefer to call themselves courtesans.”

This book makes you wish the whores gave to the poor.

1 out of 5
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