The Angel of Darkness by J.R. Milward

[UroshUchiha]

I know that this book and the sequel "The Path of the Black Alchemist" have been talked about in various threads in the AOD section, but from what I can see they have never been brought up here.

I have just finished the first book in the trilogy that Jennifer Milward plans to do and this is the review I wrote on Goodreads for the AOD retelling:

Classic Lara Croft is where it's at for me. AOD is a game that I enjoyed a lot regardless of how broken it was. "Was" because the community made some amazing mods that fix the game and restore a bunch of cut content. The story of AOD fascinated me and I always wanted that continuation.

Then came J.R. Milward with a goal to write the trilogy of books that will give us, the AOD fans, the completed story.

I dived into the book by listening to the official audiobook format uploaded to J.R. Milwards YouTube channel. It's been a few years since I replayed AOD and going through it now will keep me satisfied until they announce the remasters of TR4, TR5 and hopefully AOD.

Now onto the actual review and the things I liked about this retelling of the AOD video game.
If you are "in the know" about AOD you are aware that there's a whole story between the ending of TR4 and the beginning of AOD. This book briefly covers that story. Not in full details like the "The Myth of El Hawa" (also found on YouTube), but it's still more than what we get in the game itself. It mentions the amulet and Putai and the ending of TR4 itself. And there are also plenty of references to TR1, TR2 and TR3. I think even some vague references to TR5.

The writing style is very easy to consume which makes the audiobook format such a joy to go through.

I greatly appreciate how Lara always stops to "listen" to a new room/tomb that she explores. She takes it all in before she barges in to do what she came there to do.

Another plus is that in this book we get to hear what Lara and Kurtis are thinking with their inner monologue (sometimes dialogue sadly but we'll get there) and what they are feeling during certain moments in the story. Which I personally found enjoyable cause we don't get any of that during the game itself. Or at least not on this degree.

Now to list a few negatives that I had about this book. Lara's subconsciousness Maggie is very tedious and unnecessary. I am not sure if she was some cut content or a reference to some artefact that Lara touched in previous games that resulted in Maggie being in her or what, whichever it is, I found the dialogue between Lara and her subconscious very very annoying.

Kurtis' Chirugai is also an entity that talks, and I do not remember that from the game (maybe I just forgot?). Was that cut content or something? Thankfully Chirugai is not as chatty as Maggie nor is it Kurtis' subconscious, it's a character on its own so I did not mind it at all.

I mentioned earlier that the character's inner monologue about what they are feeling and observing is a plus and helps with immersion. The same can't be said about the descriptions of environments and locations that Lara goes to. Thankfully I played the game multiple times so I know how to picture these locations, but I feel like the book doesn't even bother in most cases to properly describe a room or a scene.

Initially I thought that this was only an audiobook problem, until I opened the PDF itself and found the same problem there too. Lara sighs A LOT in this story. She is constantly sighing for every single thing and that repetition always takes me out of the story.

The last thing is only an audiobook problem, but in certain scenes the background music (used from the game) is too loud and you can't hear a few words here and there. Not really a big issue because it doesn't happen often. What is a bigger issue is the voice effect used for Chirugai. In 90% of cases I could not understand what Chirugai said so I had to look at the PDF. Thankfully Chirugai only says a few words in the entire story so it's not too hard to look up what it said in the PDF.

I know that the sequel book "The Path of the Black Alchemist" is out now and the third one is on its way too, but sadly there doesn't seem to be an audiobook format of the sequel at the moment. Which is a shame because nowadays I prefer to consume my books in that format if I can. Hopefully after the trilogy is out, J.R. Milward will consider doing the same production just like for AOD.

The playlist for the audiobook format of AOD retelling can be found here
As mentioned at the end of my review I hope we get the same thing for "The Path of the Black Alchemist" and the third novel that we'll get at some point soon I think.