REVIEW: Yahtzee Crowshaw's books

Today, I finished the second of Yahtzee Croshaw's books.

For those who don't know, Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw is a guy who does video game reviews in the form of a five minute video review whereby he speaks at a nearly incomprehensibly fast rate with the aptly titled Zero Punctuation. He also runs a column where some of the more subtler aspects of video game culture are better analysed in two page columns for the similarly aptly named Extra Punctuation. His style of video commentary is probably best described as fantastically sarcastic, bitter and somewhat illuminating. His columns are less sarcastic but more illuminating. Indeed, I have discovered a few things about gaming that I could not quite put my finger on without being prodded in the right direction by his hand. Whilst I don't always agree with what he has said, nor do I always find his attempts at humour always hitting their mark (indeed, lately Zero Punctuation has been moving down hill in that department, I think), I do generally like the way he tries to get ideas across.
With the subtle differences between his video commentary and his column writing, I figure it would be interesting to read his books.
That's a lie. I got the first book, Mogworld, because I wanted to see how he padded it out to a novel length... and that it might be a funny read.

So....

Yahtzee Croshaw - MOGWORLD

 This story starts with a budding magic student, Jim, in a line up out the front of his magical college, waiting to be overrun by the local barbarians. He dies... but then is subsequently resurrected to work for a necromancer. From this point forth, he makes it his "life" duty to die permanently. This sort of takes a turn for the worse when his "master" gets eliminated and he, with a few companions, travel across the lands. This, of course, leads to more shenanigans that reveal more about the larger world, specifically that Jim and his companions are just characters in a large online multiplayer game that is getting its bugs ironed out (I'd call it spoilers, but it actually says so on the book's blurb so... yeah. Also, if you couldn't pick that up after the first few chapters, you really weren't paying attention).

Regular viewers/readers of Croshaw's work will immediately find themselves in a familiar location, humour-wise. There is a heavy smattering of the droll sarcastic humour lying around and it is mostly done quite well, though people who know more about gaming will get more out of it (that shouldn't be surprising really, considering who it has been written by). You can tell the British styled humour seeping through and there is one section, shortly after Jim's first resurrection, that just smacks of Monty Python's Holy Grail. The ending (or at least the absolute ending... I'll get to that in a moment) is also very clever.
The ending does drag a bit and goes through several stages, not completely dissimilar to the screen version of the third "Lord of the Rings" (though, to be fair, not anywhere near as painfully long), and I think that the book does suffer a little for it. It's not that I did not like the ending, because it is quite good, it's just a little drawn out. There are a few sections in there when not a huge amount feels like it is happening too. The story is nothing exceptionally ground breaking, apart from the whole "I just want to permanently die!" aspect. It does aim for gamers a little too much, though that is to be expected a bit.The humour is reasonably limited in scope too, though not in quantity, being primarily dead-pan black sarcasm for the most part.

Most of the book works smoothly and is reasonably well written. As is probably obvious it will appeal more to gamers than anyone else, but that does not mean those who are not will not get anything out of it. For starters, it is kind of refreshing to see the protagonists as the kind of people who you would ordinarily associate with the background of any similar form of creative product (actually, this is happening more frequently, most notably "Redshirts" by John Scalzi) and it is a pretty good satire on the current state of gaming culture. However, I think that more than a few people will find that it falls flat if you can not appreciate sarcastic humour.

Overall, I would recommend this book if you watch a few Zero Punctuation clips or read a few Extra Punctuation columns and find that you don't mind the humour used, or if you want to read something that takes the piss out of modern gaming.
Also, for those who are interested, this has been released in Audiobook form with Croshaw doing the vocals. Could be Fun.

Yahtzee Croshaw - JAM

"I woke up one morning to find that the entire city had been covered in a three-foot layer of man-eating jam."
These are the first words that greet the reader upon entering this book.
That's a lie, there's also a dedication to Google Street View thanking them for saving him a bus fare to remind Croshaw what a particular building looked like. Also, the usual stuff about "Any resemblance to etc etc"... which, quite frankly, seems stupid considering the batshit insane opening to the book, provided above.

You are viewing from the eyes of Travis, a rather slow witted person, who happens to be one of the few survivors of a "Jampocalypse" with his housemate Tim, in Brisbane. They are soon joined by Angela, a journalism student, and Don, some form of software developer with a chip on his shoulder and a missing software build, and together they try to figure out a way to survive man-eating jam.
In the course of events, a US military helicopter crashes in to Don's apartment, presenting two new people... who are quite reluctant to provide any sort of information even though it is quite clear that they have a pretty good idea of what's going on. X and Y, as they get called (in order of Chromosome designation), try to keep as little as possible to do with the other survivors but keep coming back to the group and manage to give semi-cryptic directions for the group to progress. There are also two groups of surviving colonies they find: A group of hipsters congregating at the mall and a bunch of middle management types in a corporate building a bit further down the road.

As you might imagine, the humour is much the same as the previous book only more.... overt. The whole world appears to have devolved in to stupidity, with the hipsters/internet kids a very obvious caricature of themselves, especially when trying to run a post-apocalypse civilisation. There are very few people in this book that appear even remotely sane. The main character is, essentially, a complete dumbass who has no idea of anything at any time... which is quite frustrating at times. The problem is that viewing this scenario from one of the dumbest people ever is about the only way that such an absurd tale could be told. It does work... but there are times where you want to slap most of the characters.

Another problem I had was with the way the story ended. The pacing, for the most part, was reasonable. Although it did feel like that not a huge amount was happening for the first three quarters or so of the novel, it didn't matter because it felt right. The last quarter, however, seemed to go a little too quickly. It might have been that the previous elements had lulled me in to a smooth cruisy rhythm or perhaps it had just been the abruptness of the pace rise that made it seem too jarring an increase. The ending/final two chapters also seemed a little too rushed and/or neatly stitched together. Didn't quite fit with the rest of the story in my opinion.

With all of that said, I read it in about 3 days. It's not that it is unputdownable, it's that you genuinely want to see what insanity happens next. The book starts with the ridiculousness turned to 10 and somehow occasionally ramps it up to 12, such as when the Goliath Bird Eating Spider is introduced or when the mall hipsters do... well... anything. The writing is alright, and the story is pretty straight forward once you get past the initial premise. If you have ever read "JPod", by Douglas Coupland, you will have a good idea of the level of hilarious insanity.

And that basically sums it up really. If you like offbeat and completely absurd humour, you might find it appealing. If not, you really should look elsewhere. It does feel like a weaker book than "Mogworld"... but "Mogworld" has the luxurious advantage of being about something more solid/with a more common back history.

IN CLOSING

I like Yahtzee's online work and, for the most part, the books he has written carry this on. I will say that he does feel a little limited at times, particularly through "Jam" and, it might just be me, I didn't overly like the endings as much as the body of the books. The first finished after dragging the tail a little, where as the second did the opposite and seemed to be a little rushed or too clean. He does have a brilliant imagination and, as some readings of the text based Extra Punctuation will show, he can be quite in depth and very thoughtful with how he goes about what he does. His choice of lead characters is unique and the stories are better off for it.
Overall, if you have even a passing interest in his online work, I recommend at least "Mogworld".
Jam may not be to... everyone's... tastes...
Erm... yeah. Let's stick with that.
Wait...