Basilisk

I have read thousands of books, and they normally follow the same structural rules, but on occasion an author likes to experiment with the format. Perhaps they will forgo the need for speech marks and instead write people speaking as part of a sentence. No thanks. What about telling the story as a series of letters? Could work if done correctly. A mad idea could be to publish a fictional data dump that was sent to you via email and bizarrely release it in physical form. This is only one of a few odd choices made by Matt Wixey made in Basilisk. 

When Alex Webster comes across a mysterious online game it is in her nature as a hacker to investigate further. When a fellow player goes missing, it appears that this is a game that reaches into the real world as well as online. Whilst being pursued by a mysteriuos group Alex attempts to solve a series of puzzles to discover what happened to her pal and to save herself. 

I would not tell an author not to experiment with the art of writing, but I would ask them to be cautious. Science fiction is a genre full of flights of fancy, this can be in the worlds created, but also sometimes in the structure of the book itself. Combining a complex story with a difficult structure style can lead to the book being impenetrable. In places Basilisk is not only impenetrable, but unenjoyable to read. 

Does the concept even work? The book purports to be from an academic publishing the almost unedited document that was sent to them online. For some weak reason they choose not to release it online, open access, but instead go via the traditional publishing route. A techno-thriller, bordering on cyberpunk, novel that chooses the old fashioned over the new. It makes no sense. 

The format also hampers the story. The narrative is hidden among the various data dumps in the book. This is mostly the retelling of the tale from Alex’s viewpoint. I will credit Wixey for committing to the style. Alex’s notes sound like her voice throughout, they remain in a relaxed style and do not lapse into being a normal narrative. But is this a good thing? There is a reason books are written in a normal way as they are easier to read. 

The other sections of the book suffer even more greatly from the format; email chains, excerpts from the game etc. There are also copious footnotes and web links. As a reader your eyes are pushed all around the page. You are struggling to follow the story as it is, only to be drawn to a footnote that adds nothing and takes you out of the tale. 

What of the story itself? I found the book so complex to follow that it was almost lost. It is a mind-bending tale, and it is purposely designed. I may be too simple and set in my ways for the book to have worked, in places I was actively not enjoying myself. However, there will be fans of this story. Those readers that like a convoluted and taxing story, designed to make you concetrate and delve deeper. I am not that reader.