Shirley, John

AVERAGE REVIEW SCORE:

4 out of 5

(1 book)

Bioshock: Rapture

A prequel to the critically acclaimed and fan-beloved games 'Bioshock' and 'Bioshock 2'.  In 1945, appalled by the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and disgusted with the governments of both the United States and the USSR, billionaire tycoon Andrew Ryan begins working on a secret project to escape it all.  He plans to gather like-minded individuals and create a Utopia beneath the sea; the shining city of Rapture.  However, the unchecked science and ruthless capitalism that Ryan espouses leads to inevitable conflict and Rapture is torn apart by the discovery of Plasmids, genetic agents which can grant their users remarkable powers.

I absolutely adore the 'Bioshock' games and one of the most important elements to them is the decaying art-deco city of Rapture beneath the waves of the North Atlantic.  This is the story of that city from its conception all the way up to a point not too-long before the beginning of the first game, when Andrew Ryan's planned perfect society has all but completely come apart at the seams.  This book takes the lore established within the games themselves and knits it together into a narrative of the various denizens of Rapture and how they went from eager volunteers to deranged or desperate people trying to survive a city tearing itself apart.  I really enjoyed all that but it has to be said that my enjoyment was very largely predicated on loving the games.  If you've never played 'Bioshock' then you almost certainly wouldn't enjoy the book as much as I did (but seriously, you need to go away right now and play 'Bioshock').

The main criticisms I would have for this book are linked to the fact that it is broken into the three 'Ages of Rapture'.  The first was the most enjoyable for me, as it explores how Ryan began his great endeavour, how engineers like Bill McDonagh actually built a city beneath the sea and how the man later known as Frank Fontaine began his efforts to corrupt Ryan's dream.  The second, sadly, is where the book begins to drag pretty badly.  It's about life in Rapture and how the first cracks of breakdown begin to show but is fairly slow-paced and uneventful.  The third act of the book is Rapture's fall into chaos and, whilst action-packed and dynamic, is a massive tonal shift for the book as a whole, with some scenes of genuine horror (the scene where demented plastic surgeon Dr. Steinman operating on a woman whilst she's conscious but restrained was particularly grim).  The three very different tones, paces and subjects of these three Ages don't gel together well and leave the book as a whole not feeling very coherent.

I was tempted to give the book a lower score than I have, but the stuff that I did enjoy was so good that, for me at least, it redeems the problem areas.

4 out of 5

Read more...

Bioshock (here)