Pitch Black

I suspect some of the other glowing reviews here were influenced by how much the reviewer liked the movie. I loved the movie as well, and reading this book, well, it feels like watching the movie. And I'm not sure that's a good thing.

The characters, the flow, the pacing, all stay faithful to the movie's script, more or less. I'm not sure whether this lack of embellishment and extrapolation was a directive from the movie's producers. But to me, a book is not movie. Sure, reading the book makes me recall the movie scenes in nostalgic pleasure, but I think there's a big missed opportunity here.

To the author's credit, he added in internal monologue and thoughts of most of the characters, but they're very basic, things you'd glean from just watching the movie. There's actually very little descriptive passages, beyond the minimum needed. For example, there's no tension in the book. The movie had special effects and auditory support to provide tension, but the book doesn't attempt to provide that; it just tells you what you happened. Another example is the world and that savage species. It's another missed opportunity to describe that alien planet in more detail, make it beautiful or depressing, to paint a picture so to speak.

In short, the book successfully describes all the scenes in the movie, and provides sufficient insights into their mental states and thoughts. A quick enjoyable read if you liked the movie, but you're better off just watching the movie again.