Torment : Based on the best-selling computer games from Interplay

Author: Ray Vallese, Valerie Vallese List Price: $5.99 Our Price: Click to see the latest and low price ISBN: 0786915277 Publisher: Wizards of the Coast (15 November, 1999) Edition: Mass Market Paperback Sales Rank: 155,142 Average Customer Rating: 2.79 out of 5

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Customer Reviews

It wasn't.

The storyline was weak, to put it simply. Imagine the basic plot of the game, then cut off three-quarters of its strength. The goal seemed to be to fit the basic idea of the entire game into as short of a book as possible, which translates into a book that is written faster. There seems to be no point to this book except to wrestle the last few dollars out of the buyer's hand after they spent most of it on "Planescape: Torment".

Granted, the characters are true to what you would probably expect, and the atmosphere is equivalent. The thing I just cannot get over is how dumbed-down the whole thing feels. Maybe it's just the fact that I generally dislike high fantasy, but I still suspect a deeper problem with this book.

I didn't really like the final, post-climactic scene, however. I thought it could have been done better, or not at all (it was a little corny, more so than the rest of these things, I mean). Perhaps it would have been better to leave Thane's fate unclear, or tell it through the others (wrap it up with Morte telling the story in Sigil; or simply end it in the Fortress and let your imagination fill in the blanks). A minor gripe, yes, but you hate that it's the final taste in your mouth.

I also get a little weary of the sarcastic, clownish character that always seems to be present in these things (like the faerie in White Plume Mountain); Morte and Annah alternately fill that roll. I don't really need the witty, comic banter at every turn. At least they kept the romantic side out of the Annah/Thane connection, overtly at any rate. These plot devices get a bit formulaic in this genre, but for the most part they were subdued here.

The other crutch that these novelizations seem to use is the "odd" character (a sentient hell-hound pelt? Gimme a break! The faeire was stretching it enough, in that one). This one is no different, with Morte the animated skull playing the roll. Admittedly, however, the Planescape setting is deliberately weird, so I cut this one a bit more slack.

One point to note is that I have yet to play the CRPG, so I don't have any context (besides Planescape D&D) with which to compare. Others who have reviewed this seem to suggest that the plot has been simplified in the novelization. Obviously, I can't comment. I felt that the plot was complicated enough for the length and scope of the book. Having read several of the TSR adventure/module novelizations, and having been originally familiar with the adventures themselves, I can say that simplification is often required in order to fit the scope of a single novel (there just isn't enough space to tell everything). Take the Temple of Elemental Evil -- they skip huge portions of the adventure, create a storyline that eliminates entire levels of the dungeon, and gets the characters to all the good parts, just in time to wrap it up in a novel. That's OK. The great thing about actually playing D&D is that no storyline is ever the same for a given adventure; these novelizations are just one possible path.

Ultimately, one has to evaluate this kind of tale in its appropriate context. These D&D novelizations are really, in my mind at any rate, the Harlequin romance of fantasy: light, easy fluff; a quick read with little or no mental gymnastics. This is not Moorcock or Leiber or Zelazny. Compared to those guys, this rates maybe a single star, if that. But taken in the context of the TSR fiction genre, I give this a 4 stars; I actually thought about the story a little after having finished it, to review it now that I knew the real "chant", as it were. Similar to how you thought about the Sixth Sense (movie) after you knew the punchline (but not that good! :-).

Finally, compared to the others I've read, it's better than White Plume, Temple of Elemental Evil and Descent Into Depths of the Earth (even though these were enjoyable). I even feel that it's as good as the original Dragonlance novels, but different and of course shorter (only one book, not six, or however many there were); with less heroic polish and a bit more edge -- exactly what I would expect from a Planescape setting as compared to a "traditional" D&D setting.