Perfect Dark Initial Vector: As Good as the Game?

Perfect Dark Zero did everything a video game should do well -- it had frantic action and a workman-like story that put you in vicious battles, then got out of the way. It had a strong, sexy lead character in Joanna Dark and a few supporting characters who were flat and functional.

You could say the exact same things about Perfect Dark Initial Vector, the novel based on the game.

Set in 2020, Initial Vector has a classic cyberpunk atmosphere: a powerful corporation called dataDyne, a sort of resistance force called the Carrington Institute, and almost no government whatsoever. One of dataDyne's CEOs has a secret that could bring down the entire organization, and Carrington Institute, with the help of Joanna, is out to learn that secret.

Joanna Dark is pleasantly complex in the novel, moreso than in any game, and often she struggles with her emotions -- they're a greater challenge than most of the dataDyne goons she takes out.

But as the novel focuses on her, it has little to say about the rest of the characters. The CEOs are fairly one-dimensional, the murderous Laurent Hayes is an annoying caricature, and the fatherly Daniel Carrington, head of the Carrington Institute, is only a little more fleshed out.

You can tell Greg Rucka, the author, also does comic books -- the action scenes in Initial Vector are almost as immersive as they are in Perfect Dark Zero, and every motion is carefully, vividly described. Fans of the game will enjoy that every gun is used in the novel, and Rucka clearly enjoys indulging the reader in all the subtleties of the weapons.

Unfortunately, Rucka's precision renders many scenes sterile and colorless. He doesn't use many literary devices, even when they would be most effective. Still, Rucka's writing is strong enough and has few flaws.

But one word he chose to use -- "extraordinariness" -- haunted me well after finishing the book. Was there no other way to word that sentence? How many people glossed over a clunker like that? I still wonder.

I think Initial Vector's climax could have been better, too. It seems like the book runs out of steam before it reaches the end; the most intense action comes in the middle.

Initial Vector doesn't read like a novel as much as it feels like an action movie; it's not too hard to figure out how it ends, but the fun part is getting there.