The Alan Wake Novel Review

Alan Wake is a physiological thriller with some supernatural elements thrown in. Think of it as if Stephen King would have written Twin Peaks. This is the novelization of the first game and follows famous writer Alan Wake as he and his wife take a vacation in the small town of Bright Falls, Washington. Wake is given a key to his cabin from a lady in black in a dark hallway in a diner and it all goes downhill from there. His wife is missing, he is being pursued by a rogue FBI agent, and attacked by a dark force that is taking over the town. He also finds pages from a manuscript that he doesn’t remember writing that holds keys to what is happening and how Wake can stop it and save his wife.

This book is very similar to the game, there are a couple of things that didn’t make it into the novel but at just over 300 pages, this book is longer than most books based on video games. I had the same questions reading this as I did playing the game so I was disappointed that this couldn’t answer some of those for me. However, this book has more physical descriptions than any other novels based on video games that I had read so I felt Burroughs did a good job with what he had.

Alan Wake is not the most likable character but his determination to save his wife is admirable. For me his agent Barry really balanced the grouchiness of Wake and had his own hero moments throughout. I still don’t understand the character of FBI agent Nightingale except to be so cliche. The ending is still confusing to me, I guess I will have to see what the game sequel has in store to see if I can get answers. As of now, there is no sequel book available.