Shadow of the Tomb Raider – Path of the Apocalypse is an adventure true Lara Croft fans will enjoy

Path of the Apocalypse takes readers on a new adventure for Lara Croft and Jonah from Shadow of the Tomb Raider, and readers might like the tie-ins to the popular video game.

In a world that’s increasingly coming to appreciate the female superhero, it’s easy to say that Lara Croft was way ahead of her time. Granted, the original movies came off of a time when female action movies were hit or miss (another conversation for another article). But in 2018, Lara Croft has reclaimed her fame with the latest installment of her gaming franchise, Shadow of the Tomb Raider.

For a relatively short game, fans who are still thoroughly invested in the game will be happy to know that Shadow of the Tomb Raider – Path of the Apocolypse, sent our way by Titan Publishing, expands that gaming world and brings you even more Lara (and Jonah). And for those hopeful for some Shadow of the Tomb Raider DLC, this S.D. Perry novel will be the closest thing we have for now.

If you haven’t played the game yet, you might want to hit that up before reading the book. Or at least, you might want to find yourself a let’s play and watch at least a third of the game before picking up this book — because there are about to be just a few minor game spoilers ahead.

The book picks up just after the beginning of the game where Lara unleashes the apocalypse on an unsuspecting Mexican town. In the game, we see Jonah urging Lara to have a heart and stay to help the survivors before they go beating Trinity to find the Box of Ix Chel.

Here, the book zooms into aspects of the characters that the game itself could not touch on, mainly the character’s inner-monologues. The ability of the narrative to reveal Lara’s thoughts gives a lot of insight into her motives and actions, and might be valuable for those fans who really love to dig deep and get to know more about their favorite characters.

On the other hand, the book shifts perspectives a lot. (There are no chapters, so P.O.V. changes mark different segments of the book.) Not only does it include Lara’s, but it also shifts to Jonah, a few members of Trinity, and sweet Miguel the pilot. If you aren’t that into hearing about these other characters, it doesn’t detract much from the book. At the least, it helps develop more three-dimensional characters.

After leaving the town, the books spends a majority of its time recounting a mission before Lara, Jonah and Miguel get into that devastating plane crash. The three make a side trip to explore a cave that holds yet another key to solving and saving the world from the apocalypse. But once Lara reaches this cave, the pacing of the book stagnates a bit.

For a good three quarters of the book, the perspective switches between Lara in the cave and whatever’s going on in the outside world. And while some of the cave portion of Lara’s exploration is interesting, after spending so much of the book going up, down, left and right just exploring Shrödinger’s cave, it loses the spirit of Tomb Raider games and doesn’t feel as exciting.

If you can get past some of the pacing during the last part of the book, then Path of the Apocalypse might still be a great novel to satisfying your Shadow of the Apocalypse craving.

Shadow of the Tomb Raider – Path of the Apocolypse is out now wherever books are sold.