Kingdom hearts II by Alexa Ray Corriea, a Boss Fight Books Review
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I just finished reading Kingdom Hearts 2 by Alexa Ray Corriea, the 16th book in the Boss Fight Books series, and I’ve got some thoughts, as always. That’s why you come to this channel.
Welcome to Burning Books. I’m Caleb, and I want to help you love video games even more today than you did yesterday. How am I doing that? I’m doing that today by continuing my journey to read and review all of the wonderful Boss Fight Books releases. I’ve reviewed 17 so far, check the link in the description below for a playlist that has all of those reviews, and be sure to subscribe to stay updated as new reviews are uploaded.
I’ll say this right away because I need to get it out: Kingdom Hearts 2 is an unfortunate blemish in the Boss Fight Books catalog.
Where other books blend personal anecdotes, with explorations of the subject game’s development, history, legacy, and plot to create a compelling narrative full of personality and insight, Alexa Ray Corriea’s Kingdom Hearts 2 focuses almost entirely on the game’s plot. The book is simply a retelling of the game’s narrative. Nick Suttner did something similar with Shadow of the Colossus, and while that book was better than Kingdom Hearts 2, it wasn’t much better.
So why does this exposition heavy approach not work? Kingdom Hearts is a series defined by its incomprehensible plotline. Though I’ve only played the first game in the series, conversation among fans and critics alike often focus on the absurdity of the storyline. It’s impossible to follow.
On the surface, exploring the plot with a book like this seems like it could be a good approach. Perhaps Corriea could smooth out some of the wrinkles and make some sense of the plot. But she doesn’t. She acknowledges the absurdity of the plot then spends 90% of the book confirming that absurdity.
There are two moments in the book that approach something like a good path. Later in the book, Corriea touches on sexist adventure hero tropes, spending a lot of time on the lack of female antagonists, highlighting that those who do exist are too often vapid and without personality. She even touches on, though ever so briefly, I think a single sentence, the sexist portrayal of male antagonists as idiots who are easily persuaded to fight on behalf of a vapid female character without personality. In other words, the Kingdom Hearts games don’t try to escape these sexist tropes. The problem with the author’s handling of the subject here is that she’s only giving examples. She never offers any insight or adds to the conversation about the sexist portrayal of video game characters. And that sucks.
The other part I actually really, really liked, but the treatment was so brief I kinda felt cheated a little bit, is the chapter called Bad Romances and Bad Bromances. Here, Corriea starts to explore the way male friendships are often presented in video games.
“While Riku and Sora are not in love, the boys’ friendship is one of the deepest and most moving relationships of any kind that I’ve seen in a video game. And part of why it works is because it’s not a romance. Without sexual tension or expressed desire of any kind, these relationships appear as the deepest forms of male intimacy: mutual dependence, connectedness, and respect.” (pg. 93)
Maybe fans of Kingdom Hearts, those who have played more games in the series than my one game in the series, will be more forgiving of this book. But as a fan of many Boss Fight Books whose subject games I haven’t played, I don’t feel fandom should be necessary. Besides, based on some reviews from Kingdom Hearts fans on Goodreads and Amazon, this book didn’t hit home with some of those fans either.
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Up next will probably be a review of Final Fantasy V by Chris Kohler. I’ve never played the game, never played Final Fantasy V. I’m not super familiar with the Final Fantasy series in general to be quite honest, but I like Kohler’s writing, so I’m pretty excited about this one. So subscribe, so you can be notified when this does go live, probably in about a week or two. Yeah.
Mentioned
- Boss Fight Books review playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLMKbK8vtuoicyVRhGfap2QIj5R5mWJioY
- Kingdom Hearts 2 by Alexa Ray Corriea from Boss Fight Books: https://bossfightbooks.com/products/kingdom-hearts-ii-by-alexa-ray-corriea
Alexa Ray Corriea on Twitter: https://twitter.com/AlexaRayC
Music Credits
8bit Dungeon Level Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com), Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License, http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
