Book Review: The Broken World – Tim Etchells

Its not often that I’ll go to a discount book store and find something truly wonderful to read.

This book was no exception, in fact I wouldn’t even call this a book, more a self critical footnote that would do more for the literary arts as a door stop or perhaps a semi-attractive shelf.

I am actually considering on gluing all the pages together so that a) others won’t have the displeasure of reading it b) I may also hollow it out as a book safe.

“The Broken World” is written in an introspective, narrative, diary-esqe fashion of a person attempting to write a ‘walkthrough’ guide for a video game aptly titled the same as the book while also attempting to describe, quantify and make sense of the goings on in his own life.

This is where Tim Etchells goes horribly wrong, a video game walkthrough isn’t a work of fiction, it is a work of fact written to inform of events that are based on a fictional media form, thusly the twisting of a walkthrough format as basis of a fictional novella is ultimately flawed.

And boy does it show.

There is little structure to the actual game ‘The Broken World’ at least little more than the narrator eludes to during the course of the book. The resulting descriptions of the game, its world and inhabitance are merely used as either subtext to badly join two events in the real world together or as complete filler.

I would suggest that this book would actually have been significantly better had the author had the nous to rewrite the book in narrative diary form, omitting references to the game ‘The Broken World’ and carefully constructing segues between diary entries in a non-linear fashion.

One reviewer on Amazon.co.uk writes:

This is a longish book structured as an unedited walkthrough for fiendishly complicated adventure game, written by a heavy-metal-loving 20-something slacker with a short attention span, sketchy language skills and – literally – a malfunctioning Caps Lock key.

I tend to agree.

It was almost enough for me to discard the book when the author decided to include a five and a half page section which was described as a file from the game itself, this was nothing more than a jibberish, non-sequitor attempt to show off the complexity of the book which I have my beliefs may have been included to do nothing but raise the page count at the behest of the publisher.

In short, this book is a good example of a bad novel that could have been glorious, had both its writing style and execution been discarded from the start.

Score: Zero Stars