Lawbreakers Review

Developer: Boss Key

Publisher: Nexon

Release Date: August 8, 2017

Platforms: PC (reviewed), PS4

Me and arena shooters go back to 2001 with Aliens vs Predator 2. That was the game that seduced me to the genre, to the exhilarating fragfest of twitch aiming and explosions—and Xenomorph pouncing. After that came Unreal Tournament: 2004 and then Team Fortress 2, but by then, I was starting to play a wider variety of games on a wider variety of systems. This lead to a gradual falling out with the genre as playerbases dwindled alongside my free time.

Those good memories never left though, and I’ve been on this lazy hunt for another arena shooter in the same vein of AvP2 and UT2k4 for what feels like a long time. TF2 is great, but it doesn’t have the speed I want.

Cue Boss Key’s Lawbreakers hitting the scene in 2017. My search is over.

In a way, Lawbreakers is a combination of two of the aforementioned arena shooters. It has the class system of TF2 mixed with the massive gunplay and wild speed of UT2k4. It’s just as addictive as both.

Yet the game isn’t a simple A + B = C. Lawbreakers throws enough twists and turns at the genre to stand on its own and succeed at everything it tries to do. It’s the best of old-school mechanics with all the shiny polish of 2017.

The biggest twist is the zero-gravity bubbles that reside in the middle of every map. Lawbreakers demands its audience go vertical when fighting, and that means getting off the ground and into the air. It makes for a strong learning curve, but once it clicks it feels absolutely amazing. It helps that most characters have their own ways to zip around the map, either through actual flight or things like grappling hooks and teleportation.

Lawbreakers is its own animal when it comes to combat, because attacks can come from any direction.

The game is class based, featuring a cast of nine characters to play, each coming with two special moves and an ultimate on a timer. There’s a lot of personality to each of them, though not quite as much as TF2 or Overwatch. Still, the little things help set them apart, such as the Battle Medic barking, “Here comes health!” or Juggernaut going, “Remember when I told you I’d kill you last? I lied!” I’m quite fond of most of them.

Before we continue, here’s a quick rundown of the cast:

• Assassin: Glass-cannon, melee-DPS class with two swords and a shotgun side arm
• Battle Medic: Healing class equipped with a grenade launcher and capable of flight
• Enforcer: Support soldier class with a nice machine gun and grenade
• Gunslinger: Precision class with two handguns, the first precision the second auto
• Harrier: Support class complete with a laser rifle, laser boots, and a small heal
• Juggernaut: Tank class with a big shotgun, a big health pool, and the ability to deploy barriers
• Titan: Heavy DPS class with a rocket launcher and a electric flamethrower-style side arm
• Vanguard: Glass-cannon DPS class equipped with a Gatling gun and flight
• Wraith: DPS class mixing melee abilities, gunplay, and speed

On first look, there are a lot of classes that can play supporting roles (Battle Medic, Enforcer, Harrier, and Juggernaut); however, what most class-based arena shooters call support and what Lawbreakers calls support are different levels of violence.

In Lawbreakers, you help the team by being fast and killing regardless of who you’re playing as.

The Battle Medic, for example, has fire-and-forget heals, meaning you’re spending most of the game flying above everyone else and raining down grenades or picking off stragglers with her pistol. I do a lot of healing sure, but I also do a ton of damage. She’s an absolute joy to play and probably my favorite healing class in a video game ever.

The other supporting classes follow in a similar line, with the Enforcer and Harrier packing fairly high-DPS weapons despite offering team buffs. Juggernaut is the only one who really feels more like a tank, but he offsets that by being able to deploy shields that can stop enemies from scoring objectives or entering healing stations.

As someone who loves arena shooters but isn’t very good at them, I love that the supporting roles are just as viable and fun to play as the DPS ones.

The DPS ones, meanwhile, are absolutely insane. Aside from the lumbering Titan, movement is nonstop speed and action, with teleports, grapples, and a lady that’s half fighter jet. Everyone feels good to play as, especially the Vanguard and Assassin classes who have more erratic movements. The Vanguard really does feel like you’re flying an airplane complete with machine guns and cluster bombs, and the Assassin feels like a cross between Spider Man and Ryu friggen Hayabusa.

Every time I jump into another match of Lawbreakers, I’m always surprised at how good and fun the general movement is.

On the whole, the game is pretty balanced, with one or two ultimates being a little more powerful than they need to be. Still, given the wide disparity in health values, I very rarely find myself exploding with no reason behind it. There’s always that little chance I can exit a bad fight and grab more health.

I’d say the TTK is about perfect, or as perfect as a class-based shooter can be.

The game modes themselves offer another twist on the arena-shooter genre in that there is no Death Match or Team Death Match. Everything is objective based, which is something I really, really appreciate. Objectives breed more variety than simple run-and-gun, and I feel less bad about dying left and right when I’m helping guard a battery or cap a blitz ball.

Lawbreakers comes with five modes, two based off of King of the Hill, two off of Capture the Flag, and one off of Assault. The two King of the Hill type modes are standard, but the others act as an evolution of their predecessors. The two CTF modes involve holding a battery at your base to charge, meaning capping isn’t just about retrieving the battery—you have to defend it too. I’m not sure that’s an inspired change or not, but it does add a new dynamic (and a new level of tension) to a tried-and-true game mode.

Blitz Ball is the Assault-style mode, though it’s more of a sport than an assault. The ball has to be taken to the enemy base, but given how fast Lawbreakers is, it typically winds up shooting everywhere like a deranged game of soccer where everyone has a gun. When a Titan or Juggernaut grabs it, the mode slows down to a tense trudge ala football.

Suffice to say, it’s an absolute blast.

It should also be noted that while Lawbreakers is $30, it comes with a lot of content. There are nine characters, five game modes, and eight maps. There are also tons of unlockables, though they’re all found in loot ‘Staches that have to be found our purchased via real money. Thankfully, they only contain cosmetic items such as weapon skins and decals, so you don’t have to worry about any pay-to-win mechanics here.

While fun can be had in spades, Lawbreakers isn’t without its few quirks and problems. The first big one is that it wastes the player’s time. Time between matches can last up to a minute and a half, even when the lobby is full and everyone is ready. There’s no “Ready” system to speed things along. What’s worse is you can’t open ‘Stache boxes while waiting, so you’re stuck watching the clock tick down.

‘Staches open very, very slowly I might add. There’s no reason for it.

There’s also no way to pick what maps or modes you’ll be playing. Quick matches means it’s all random. I honestly don’t know why there isn’t a voting system with even two or three choices to pick from, as games like Halo have been doing that for ages. It’s one of the few times where Lawbreakers doesn’t feel modern at all.

Finally, the game does come with a very hefty skill ceiling. That’s less of a complaint and more of a fact of life, but there are a lot of little things to learn. The game doesn’t always do a great job of teaching those things, either. Some characters have side arms while others don’t, and none of that is effectively communicated.

I didn’t learn the Assassin had a shotgun until someone told me, for example. (Admittedly, I’ve never touched the tutorial area.)

That all being said, Lawbreakers is a fantastic arena shooter with a lot to love. It aims for fast, frantic, and fun, and it hits all three consistently. The classes are all fun to play, but the way it treats its supporting roles is really what I find shines the best. No one feels left out. Everyone feels viable. Little twists and turns abound, both in the gunplay and the game modes themselves, and while I have some small gripes, they’re just that: small.

I’ve been looking for a new arena shooter for what feels like a long time. I’ve finally found one.

Fred Strydom’s The Raft Review

SPOILER WARNING: This is a hard novel to talk about without divulging some plot and thematic details. I very much recommend you stop here and pick this book up, because it’s fucking fantastic and I don’t want to ruin any of the major surprises in any way. Seriously, go buy this.

I’ve always liked the idea of large-scale unreliability in stories, though my experience with them is few and far between. There are one or two shorter tales I remember reading in college when studying unreliable narrators, but I’ve never actually had the pleasure of reading a full on novel with an unreliable narrator. Well, that is until Fred Strydom’s The Raft.

I have been missing out, because this book is absolutely amazing.

The day everyone on Earth lost their memories is referred to as Day Zero. It was a reset, and one that turned a technologically advanced world into a listless series of communes where people amount to nothing. Those that lead the communes—which remind me of a Jim Jones joint—promise to lead humanity into a new stage of evolution: A New Renaissance is coming! In the meantime, people need to think about community in a simpler way, one that forgoes family ties and materialism. Those are bad.

Oh, and if you try to escape, they’ll shove you on a raft and float you out into the middle of the ocean with nothing to eat except some plants that make you hallucinate.

Kayle Jenner lives in one such commune, and unlike most, his memories are somewhat complete. He had a house with a pair of horses, a wife, a son, and a daughter. He was even happy. A tragic car accident and Day Zero put a stop to that, and now he’s stuck on a beach memorizing a philosophy he doesn’t truly believe and wondering why he can’t stop dreaming of his son, Andy. Should he go find Andy? Can he? Will Andy even remember him?

These questions become Kayle’s main fear as he journeys to find his son, though the reader quickly becomes concerned with bigger questions about reality itself. Kayle’s core memories span his entire life, making him more reliable than anyone else in the commune, though there are blanks and oddities that he cannot account for, such as a mysterious figure named Jack Turning. His dreams too are strange. There’s an orb in the sky, one that has a sentience to it that makes no sense. Kayle dreams of this orb every night, and as it turns out, others are too.

While Kayle rightfully frets about his son and missing wife, we are left wondering how sane he truly is and what kind of supernatural being is affecting the world.

It’s a wonderful setup that turns The Raft into an untrustworthy soup with way more questions than answers. As the novel progresses and the world grows in clarity, the questions grow in number and importance.

And all of the above is only the first layer of unreliability. There are two more as the novel goes on, though I won’t spoil either. I’m sure you can guess one of them though.

The Raft is written in the first-person past perspective, with Kayle telling his story (which is actually a fourth level of unreliability now that I think of it); however, the novel doesn’t confine itself to just Kayle, nor does it always care about his story. As Kayle moves through the world, he encounters plenty of other characters who feel—perhaps supernaturally—compelled to tell them stories from their lives. The result is a series of first-person past shifts that make sense within the novel’s framework while also creating quick connections between the reader and strangers.

It’s absolutely wonderful. The writing is superb, and the all the vignettes within are perfectly executed in what they set out to do. Kayle’s story is compelling in its own right, but I never felt upset when perspective shifted to someone else because I knew I was in for a treat. Be it a little bit of horror, a giant heap of scifi and world building, or a mix of both, each of these chapters could stand alone if need be.

Each story ends with Kayle asking a question, and each time he’s given a little piece of a thematic puzzle. He then continues on, because nothing matters as long as he can find his son.

“Nothing matters” turns out to be one of the big themes of the novel. Even from the get-go The Raft is dark, but as it progresses, it submerges itself into nihilism and the deep-rooted fears that come with that philosophy. This is a bleak book, and there are times when it is outright cruel, both to its characters and the reader.

Towards the late middle of the novel, we begin getting some answers, though I didn’t like them much at first. Thankfully our fourth wave of unreliability hits with such a brutal force that it resets every notion I had about the book.

Mr. Strydom played with my expectations over and over again until I had no idea what was really going on. Even now that I’ve finished the novel, I still don’t know what’s really real and what is imaginary.

In that way, The Raft is probably the first book I’ve read with what a video game would call replayability. I want to go back in and see where things line up now that I know how it ends, because I think I’ll discover some amazing secrets I missed on my first go through.

I know not everyone will appreciate a dark-as-hell book that plays with your mind, but if that mix sounds enjoyable, then you really have to pick this book up. It is downright amazing. The Raft is easily the best book I’ve read this year, and one that I’m not sure will be topped.

Rachael Pollack’s The Child Eater: Book Review

(SPOILER WARNING: Because I like this book and you should read it; please note that there are minor spoilers after paragraph seven. Everything up until then is spoiler free, however.)

Expectations are funny things, and I’m not just talking about setting them too high or having none at all. No, I’m talking about ones of genre, of expecting one kind of plot or tone and finding yourself with something completely different. For any kind of artist, it’s a gamble. People generally know exactly what they’re looking for, be it romance, dragons, or a dystopia filled with laser-wielding robots. To pretend to deliver that only to make an abrupt shift is just as apt to turn someone away as it is to delight him/her.

The Child Eater by Rachael Pollack is a book that played with my expectations and played with them hard, and damn, I’m really happy it did so. It’s great.

The Child Eater follows two children separated by space and time. Matyas is a poor kid living in a medieval world where magic exists. His parents are abusive, and when he sees a mysterious man flying, he decides to run away from home to become a wizard. Simon Wisdom is an upper-middleclass American living in the present. His family motto is, “to be more normal than normal,” which is hard to follow when you’re born with mild psychic powers.

Both are plagued by the same, awful visions of a dark hallway filled with gruesome paintings and pleading children. At the end of the hallway is a monster known as The Child Eater.

When I first picked up The Child Eater, I assumed I was reading a kid’s book. The prose is somewhat simple and unassuming, the two main characters are young, around 11 or 12, and both of their stories start off with a version of, “Once upon a time….” My expectations were firmly set!

For the first 30 or so pages, my expectations were met. It was a little dark for a kid’s book, but when a monster is eating kids, that’s to be expected. But then things started to get rather gruesome, with talking heads, dismembered body parts, crying ghosts, and quite a lot of blood. Kid’s books can be dark (see The Golden Compass), but this felt like a little much.

The more I continued, the darker and more complicated everything became until I realized that no, this isn’t a kid’s book. It reads like one, and at times it certainly feels like one, but it isn’t. Instead, this is a dark, complicated novel with wonderful horror elements and deeply flawed characters. It’s a novel that managed to keep me on my toes, scare me once or twice, all while feeling like a Brian Jacques or C.S. Lewis tale.

It’s very rare that a book can make me feel like a kid yet treat me like an adult.

Strangely enough, it isn’t The Child Eater himself that sold me but Matyas. At first I didn’t like the wannabe-wizard all that much. He’s headstrong to a fault, has an anger problem, and in general, makes some very rash and poor decisions. I sympathized with his home life, but once he left, I expected him to start changing for the better. He never does.

It doesn’t help that his quest is a selfish one. He wants to learn how to fly for himself and for himself only. It has nothing to do with stopping The Child Eater or bettering mankind.

It’s hard to sell a reader on negative character growth, but The Child Eater managed to do so. There was a time when I told myself I didn’t care about Matyas at all, would be happy if he died, yet when he started to struggle, I found myself rooting for him. It didn’t matter that he wasn’t trying to better the world; he deserved to succeed because we all do.

While Matyas follows a very strange character arc, Simon’s is a bit more straightforward. He’s living in a world without magic, so when the visions appear, he isn’t sure how to handle them. His father, who is no stranger to bad dreams, tells Simon to ignore them. “They’re just dreams!” is Jack’s go-to answer, because his son needs to be normal. Simon is left on his own, too scared and ashamed to ask for help but also in desperate need of it. There is, after all, a monster after him.

Simon’s struggle through this kind of horror story is one we’ve seen before, though it’s executed well. No, what makes the real-world portion of The Child Eater interesting is Simon’s father. Jack Wisdom is a wonderfully complicated character, playing both parts of angry/overprotective parent and terrified/helpless father. Even when he’s making poor choices and acting like a fool, it’s still hard to really get angry with him because he always has his son’s best interests at heart.

With two stories and two main characters, The Child Eater sets itself up with and excels at parallels. Matyas and Simon are vastly different yet eerily similar too, and for those who enjoy literary analysis, there’s a lot to explore and unpack.

The Child Eater isn’t a flawless, novel, but honestly, the problems I have with it are quite minor. There’s a brief lull in the action somewhere around the late middle of the book, where both characters take some time to advance their abilities. It’s ultimately a required section, but it really slowed things down. Thankfully, it only lasts a few short chapters.

The second flaw is the magic system itself, which is mostly undefined and strangely pretentious. There are spellbooks about the color of songs on Jupiter, for example, and while that’s an interesting set of words to put together, it doesn’t make for compelling magic. Once again, it all eventually comes together in the end, but it made the, “learning magic” section a bit hard to get through.

At the end of the day, I picked up The Child Eater because I thought it would be a fun little novel to kick back and relax to. I enjoy kid’s books now and then (see The Golden Compass), and I expected a similar kind of whimsical tale. Rachel Pollack delivered, but she also gave me more than I had bargained for. As the characters age, so too does the novel, until it’s staring at tough decisions and the idea that redemption might not be possible for everyone.

This one’s a keeper.

Stephen King’s The Talisman Review

When I first started Peter Straub’s/Stephen King’s The Talisman, I thought I was being treated to a kid’s book. It certainly starts off like one, with 12-year old Jack Sawyer heading to a mysterious world in the hope of finding a cure for his sick mother. Wild adventures and friends await on a road fraught with danger, and Jack’s evil uncle is close behind, trying to stop him.

But this is a Stephen King novel, and it didn’t take long for The Talisman to morph into something dark, gritty, and vulgar in the kind of way only Stephen King can manage.

My relationship with kid’s books or novels with children as protagonists is strange. I love a great many kid’s books yet, from The Narnia Chronicle to Pullman’s Dark Materials to Harry Potter To Redwall in all its iterations. Yet, as I’ve grown older, I’ve moved away from stories that heavily feature children. There’s just something a bit too farfetched about a kid saving the world. Maybe I’ve grown up; maybe I’m just a cynic. Maybe those two are the exact same thing. Whatever the case, I only glanced at The Talisman’s synopsis before buying, figuring a big ol’ Stephen King novel sounded like a good choice regardless of the topic.

I was surprised at what I found, but not skeptical. Stephen King is very, very good at writing children. I only have to point to It as an example of that.

The Talisman knows that it isn’t a kid’s book, and that’s why I found it so compelling. Jack is young, and that only makes his road all the more dangerous. Even when his journey is being whimsical, there’s still this little haze over everything that something very bad could happen. It’s the kind of realistic fantasy that Stephen King has done over and over again, only now the scale has shrunk to something less crazy.

Basically, it works damn well, and the only reason I’m harping on about it is I find it interesting. The dichotomy of what The Talisman is and how it’s presented is cool. I like that it’s basically a kid’s book for adults. The Territories that Jack finds himself in feel like the kind of parallel universe I’d have enjoyed when I was Jack’s age, only way more dangerous, and Morgan Sloat is basically a Disney villain, only way more ruthless.

Throughout, there are werewolves, big castles, magical trinkets, haunted forests, monsters, and a wild train ride that was a particular highlight. All of these triggered some mental nostalgia of what I loved as a kid thanks to their presentation and the way Jack sees the world, yet there was always something more about them, something real.

For example, when Jack meets Wolf, I immediately fell in love with the big, oafish werewolf. The two hit it off, and Wolf himself is a bit of a simpleton and a complete sweetheart. Yet he is a werewolf, and during the full moon, he goes feral. When the two get stuck in our world, a clock begins ticking down, and the zero mark spells ferocious carnage. Wolf doesn’t want to hurt Jack, not ever, but that means nothing when he changes.

When the two get captured and sent to some kind of strange half-cult wayward house for disgruntle children, the tension of that ticking clock only goes up.

It’s this kind of realistic danger coupled with the whimsical that make The Talisman such an amazing novel, and the dichotomy that is Wolf certainly makes him an amazing character.

The same complexity can be found in Jack’s other companion, Richard Sloat, though for different reasons. Richard’s last name should give that away. The ticking timebomb here isn’t one of carnage but one of revelations, and Richard lacks the fortitude to handle it. He’s annoying at first but for the right reasons, and his story arc is compelling.

I’ve always enjoyed a novel that can instill the concept of “a great distance” in me. Big journeys need to feel big, and that reflection of, “Wow, the start of this quest feels like years ago” is something I find impressive. The Talisman has that in spades, and it’s easy to get lost in how much truly changes between Jack’s first conversation with Speedy Parker and his entering of The Blasted Lands.

It’s a novel where so much happens, yet it doesn’t feel like a big sprint to the finish line. Jack finds himself in numerous places, and the time spent in each one feels natural. This becomes doubly important as he’s racing his mother’s illness, and once he finds the talisman, he still has to bring it back. If Jack gets lost or stuck for a few weeks, that’s a few weeks where his mother is dying.

The Talisman offers the kind of journey where the entire world is against a kid, and that means the falls are brutal and the successes are overpowering.

If I have any criticisms at all, it’s that The Talisman follows the hero’s journey too closely. Jack is called, Jack goes, and Jack eventually finds what he’s looking for. In terms of plot, the book really does play things safely, but when it comes to world building and characters, it’s still an absolute joy. Jack himself is a great protagonist, being just a little self depreciating and cynical, and the people he meets on his journey are all pretty awesome in one way or another. King excels at creating people, and that doesn’t change here.

If it feels like I’ve downplayed Peter Straub’s additions to The Talisman, it’s because I’m unfamiliar with his work. I don’t know what role he had in the writing of this book, but it certainly reads and feels like a Stephen King novel. I personally consider that high praise, but fans of Straub might not.

I really enjoyed my time with The Talisman, and it comes with a high recommendation. If you’re in the mood for a straight-up fun adventure, it’s worth a read.

Stephen King’s Revival: Book Review

I’ve always associated Stephen King with large plots, tons of characters, and a certain level of crazy that I just don’t get elsewhere. He is, after all, the man that gave us Pennywise the Clown, Jack Torrance, and Randall Flagg (among many, many others). Yet his last few novels have taken a step back from this norm, giving us something smaller in scope and normalcy. Dr. Sleep was more a slice-of-life book than anything else, and Joyland is a small story about a college student’s summer vacation job.

Revival continues this trend. It’s not about something; it’s about someone, in this case, Jamie Morton. It’s a chronicle, a first-person past journal, and Jamie only focuses on what he considers important to his life story. There are no deep cuts to other characters, and there isn’t anything overly supernatural going on in Jamie’s life. No domes are falling from the sky to trap a town; no alien vessels are being uncovered.

There are certainly no characters on the same level as Randall Flagg.

Yet, that’s okay. It’s nice to see King tackle something smaller, and it’s also nice to see him work with a different writing style than his norm. After well over 50 novels, it’s nice to know that King can still surprise his fans.

Revival is, loosely put, about Jamie Morton’s relationship with Charles Jacobs. The two first meet when Jamie is young, playing with a bunch of toy soldiers in his front lawn. Jacobs (then a reverend) is going door to door to introduce himself as the new minister, and he helps Jamie set up his soldiers and plot out their plan of attack.

The first leg of the novel describes Jamie as a child, his home town, and Charles Jacobs. In some regards, there’s really not much plot to be had. It’s a slice-of-life affair, a sweet nostalgic trip towards a time when life was carefree and normal. Jacobs is a nice guy, and Jamie is an imaginative kid. The two get along well, but they also don’t interact all that much. We find out that Jacobs is interested in electricity—what Jamie’s dad calls a “hobby horse”—but other than that, much of this section of the novel is simply characters interacting with each other.

Life changes when Jacobs’ family is killed in a car accident. He forgoes God and leaves to pursue his hobby horse. Life then continues on.

If this all sounds boring and not worth reading, you’d be wrong. Jamie’s childhood, while not filled with tension, is still interesting and entertaining. There’s something relatable to him and to Reverend Jacobs; but more than that, there’s something behind the simple past. Stories are not written without reason, so we as readers know Jamie will eventually hit some kind of point, some kind of revelation. It’s just a matter of getting there and enjoying the ride in the process.

After Jacobs leaves, Jamie talks of highschool and beyond. He falls in love with the guitar, and he eventually joins a band. He gets a girlfriend. Life is, well, life. Jamie’s adolescence isn’t the norm by any means, yet it’s still just as mundane as the norm.

Revival isn’t a page turner, and in fact, reads best at one or two chapters per day. There’s no great urgency to want to hit the end, but that’s okay. The book knows exactly what kind of story it is, and it’s that comfortability that makes it such a pleasant and interesting read.

It also helps that Revival might be some of King’s best writing, and his use of first-person past is brilliant. I’ve always had problems with the first-person genre, mostly because it’s hard to write in and many authors don’t do a good job of it. It’s not always believable to hear such a complete story when life is long and details are easily forgotten. King knows this, and his writing acts accordingly.

Jamie forgets long sections of his life, and he chooses to simply not narrate others that aren’t important. The details about his childhood are good enough to paint a scene, yet they are sparse enough to be believable. As Jamie moves towards the present, the details of his life become more vivid and clear. The reader can tell how far in the past something is based on Jamie’s way of talking, and that goes a long way to make him and his story feel real.

Throughout Revival, Jamie runs into Charles Jacobs again and again. As the two age, Jacobs’ obsession with electricity continues to grow, until he’s working with what he calls “secret electricity” that has the power to heal cancers, cure addictions, and even fix things like hearing loss.

Yet Jacobs’ secret electricity seems to come with a price, as those healed by him seem to suffer delusions and other mental problems. Most of these problems are slight—sleepwalking for example—while others are more severe.

The mystery becomes one of motive. Jacob’s abandons religion for science, yet as he refines his healing arts, he’s becomes a revival priest, going from town to town to cure those in need. He acts like a generic charlatan, but his results are anything but generic.

Yet in some respects, it’s not Jacobs’ electricity that’s interesting, it’s his change in character. Watching him go from the nice (and slightly naïve) reverenced to a cold scientist is remarkable, and it all comes off as realistic. Revival is, at its core, a book about characters and the effects tragedy can have on people.

The same can be said of Jamie, who goes through some drastic changes as he narrates the phases of his life. It’s a shame that he hits a few points King has tread often, such as drug addiction, but there are still plenty of surprises to be had.

Odds are you’ll find Revival in the horror section of your local book store. For the first 80% of the book, you’ll be wondering why. It’s not scary. It’s interesting, it’s fun, but it isn’t scary. Yet the last 20% are awash in Lovecraftian horror, and you can easily tell where King is drawing his inspiration from. From the get-go, Revival set itself up towards some kind of payoff, an answer to why Jamie is telling us his story. The payoff to this question is intense, amazing, and absolutely worth the wait.

It’s also terrifying, and it’s the kind of horror that has allowed H.P. Lovecraft to withstand the test of time. The actions near the end of Revival are scary, but it’s the ideas behind them that will stick with you.

In some respects, Revival is the kind of book H.P. Lovecraft would have written if he were good at writing characters.

Revival is a break from what I expect from Stephen King. It’s an introspective look on religion and loss, it treads some well-used Stephen King archetypes, and there are points of the novel where there doesn’t seem to be a point at all. Yet the payoff is excellent, and the journey to that payoff is worth the read, even if it’s slow and mundane at points.

Revival is worth your time.