When resourceful crime-busting journalist Candela Fuertes wakes up inside Castian Warnes fiendish labyrinth of death, she realises with a shock that she only has fifty-six minutes left before she is murdered by poison gas… or, preferably, fifty-six minutes to solve all the increasingly complex puzzles that lie ahead of her, inject herself with the antidote and escape the labyrinth unscathed. But time is already ticking away and the reader has an even bigger problem on their hands – because the reader is Candela Fuertes, we can practically hear the poison gas building up behind our own walls, and we have only fifty-two minutes left to play.
The concept of a book based upon the popular Escape Room phenomenon is an ingenious one, and it’s easy to see why Ivan Tapia’s The Escape Book was such a big hit when it was first published in his native Spain exactly a year ago. It’s a bit like a grown-up version of those old ‘Choose your own destiny’ adventure books that were so popular in the 1980s (especially with sad sacks like me, who didn’t have any friends to play ‘real’ Dungeons & Dragons with) and the variety of different puzzles will (for the most part) bend your brain in interesting directions: there are conundrums, anagrams, optical illusions, lateral thinking and logic puzzles, some of which are so tricksy that you might be grateful for the ‘clue zone’ section at the back of the book when you get really stuck. The story part of The Escape Book is pretty well written too, with Candela/us jumping around between memories of her childhood and her investigative knowledge of the bad guy while the clock is always TICK-TOCK TICK-TOCK TICK-TOCK TICK-TOCKing. It’s surprising how much tension Tapia’s prose/puzzle combo manages to create, especially as the puzzles grow increasingly harder the deeper you proceed into the labyrinth.
But although The Escape Book is a refreshing alternative from crossword magazines or cheating at Sudoku (come on, we’ve all done it) it does get a little bit lost in translation because, unlike the ‘real world’ Escape Room experience, there’s no genuine urgency to try and complete the puzzles in time. In fact, although the narrative constantly reminds us that Candela’s clock is relentlessly ticking down to disaster, The Escape Book is probably better suited for dipping into and solving the occasional puzzle whenever you’re inclined. In fact, if you read the story like a piece of fiction as well as deciphered the puzzles, it’s unlikely that most readers would be able to complete the labyrinth within the allotted fifty-something minutes, even though Tapia’s written the book so cleverly that it is possible to ‘synchronise’ Candela’s count-down with your own reading speed. An added issue is that occasionally the puzzles are so frustrating that you’ll be inclined to cheat just to keep reading the story, which is obviously something you could never do in an actual Escape Room.
Still, it’s a fun idea that’s well worth the cover price and should keep most puzzle-junkies happily occupied on an especially rainy day…
THE ESCAPE BOOK / AUTHOR: IVAN TAPIA / PUBLISHER: AURUM PRESS / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW
