Hellgate: London - Exodus, A Book Review

The library is a great place to find something new to read.  It's often difficult to know where to go next when you've exhausted the available material by an author, but the library is a constant source of new possibilities.

Recently I found the Hellgate: London novel "Exodus" in one of the rotary paperback sections.  Back when Hellgate: London had just been released, I remember hearing how the story was really told in the tie-in novels, rather than through the game.

Hellgate London: Exodus

The book opens nearly 2 decades before the events depicted in Hellgate: London itself.  Many of the Templar order have just made the ultimate sacrifice, giving their lives so that the demons spewing forth from the Hellgates may believe them defeated once and for all.

This is the first stumbling block for Hellgate: London: Exodus.  While the Templar make a great sacrifice that night, only in words do the other Templar respect what they did.  The surviving Templar make little attempt to hide their presence.

While it may have been difficult to write a book in which the main characters spend all their days indoors, the book could have been less combat orientated.  When hiding from demons, the best tactic is not to engage them at every opportunity.

This could, of course, be the influence of Simon Cross.  Simon begins the book in South Africa where his prowess with a blade is demonstrated against poachers that attack the tour group he is leading.

Events lead Simon back to London and the demon invasion. Simon is never really given much of a backstory or consistent personality over the course of the book.  The only real thing that stays consistent with Simon is that his answer to everything is gratuitous violence.

Decisions he makes throughout the book are mostly noble, if predictably blockheaded.  He makes decisions with his incredibly fickle heart, as opposed to his brain.  A combination of the two would have greatly enhanced Simon as a character.  As it stands, he comes off as a 2-dimensional character who will do the "good thing" regardless of how that effects those around him.  He has no tact.

The same can be said for Warren Schimmer, Hellgate: London: Exodus's resident Cabalist.  While Simon had very little depth, Warren is even more poorly fleshed out.  He is given a token 'tragic past' that is referred to throughout the book as if it's something that could not have been covered in the original paragraph that it takes place during.  Again and again the book returns to this quickly tiring past.  All this brooding over his past causes Warren to be an incredibly irrational character prone to bizarre rages and emotional flip-flopping.

Similar to the lack of depth in the characters, the storyline itself takes 350 pages to get anywhere.  By which time it's just too late to salvage it.  The 70 or so remaining pages become far more purposeful, but the damage is done by this time.

What is consistent throughout the book is the terrible writing.  I can only assume that this was taken from a scanned hand-written manuscript using character recognition technology and then never checked through as an electronic copy.  While words are mostly proper english ones, they often make no sense.  "hack" appears instead of "back".  "lie" appears where "he" should be, "oven" instead of "over" etc.

Hellgate: London: Exodus showed promise late on, but ultimately was a rather unrewarding read.  Avoid it, even as a free borrow.  It may be a little late to warn any of you, but hey, nobody warned me!