Tie in books are fraught with dangers, games tie-ins more so, but Christopher Golden has turned in a book with skips and saunters around the precipice of mediocrity.

Uncharted: The fourth Labyrinth delivers an uncomplicated adventure story, which takes the best bits of the game and gives us a modern day Indiana Jones to journey with.

Returning from another adventure in South America, our hero Nathan Drake gets a mysterious call from his mentor Victor Sullivan (Sully). One of Sully’s old friends has turned up dead, having been investigating some great power to be found at the centre of a mythical labyrinth. His surviving daughter believes that her step mother and an arms manufacturer are behind the murder. With friends and ‘damsel in distress’ in tow, Nathan must search the world to solve the mystery and stop the power falling into the wrong hands.

As you can see the plot could have been written in the thirties and it is no mistake that his wisecracking personality owes more than a little to Indy’s personification. Once the plot gets properly going the book is a little tied to its original franchise, though, unlike some other books it never feel like your peeking over the shoulder of someone else just playing the game.

So, not a world shattering novel, but it does use the genres tropes well, making for an easy and comfortable read.

6

Charles Packer