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May 26, 2012ROBERT JAMES DUNLOP rated this title 3.5 out of 5 stars
Yes, it's a book based in the city of Rapture, the underwater metropolis in which the two Bioshock games are set. It's a video game novelization spinoff. It is not, however, half bad. Bioshock: Rapture is set before the outbreak of the Rapture Civil War (for those of you who haven't played the games, _why are you reading this_? http://store.steampowered.com/app/7670/ Enjoy!) and even covers some of the construction of the city. It grants insights into the characters you encounter in the games, fleshes out backstories and gives a sense of "where did these people come from" that the games - being what they are - don't really have time to get into. The ravages of ADAM and EVE on the city's inhabitants is also further fleshed-out in a fashion that brings back some of the more visceral horror of the first game. On the detrimental side, the author seems to have fallen prey to "Hey, I know that/him/her!" syndrome, so common to some EU Star Wars authors. Virtually no characters are introduced whose voices we didn't hear in the game. For a city of tens of thousands, you'd think there'd be a few new faces that we hadn't seen before, but even parts of the audio diaries are transcribed into the novel. I understand wanting to make the novel seem to flow naturally to the games, but there's no reason we couldn't come to know a few more people, and have them say some new things that we hadn't heard before. Overall, I think Bioshock: Rapture is an excellent addition to the world established by 2K games... but it's definitely not the literary marvel of the age.