From: jogle@zia.aoc.nrao.edu (Jim Ogle (Ks. Jim))
Subject: REVIEW: "Out of Nippon"
Organization: National Radio Astronomy Observatory, Socorro NM
Date: Tue, 29 Sep 92 02:13:44 GMT

"Out of Nippon" is the latest TORG novel.  It weighs in at 350 pages
and costs $4.95.  You should be able to find it wherever you buy your
TORG stuff.  It is by Nigel Findley, a name I recognize from all the
TORG credits but I don't remember what he's actually done.

As you might have guessed, a good portion of this novel deals with
Nippon Tech.  What it does not deal with is the Kanawa Corporation,
Kanawa-san himself, samurai warriors, or robots - the use of the cover
art from the Nippon Tech sourcebook for the novel cover might lead you
to believe this though.  I also think the graphics for the title
itself look wrong but I really can't describe why - they just don't
fit somehow.

This book is a very good introduction to TORG, Nippon Tech and Orrorsh
in particular.  The writing is also pretty decent - it doesn't have
that feel of transcribed game sessions some other TORG fiction has
suffered from and while there are some slow patches, it never drags.

Nippon Tech never comes across as another realm in the novel, which is
of course how it should be.  Even the Storm Knight party that appears
near the end of the book (our main character is not a Storm Knight
until the end BTW) only suspects that Japan has been invaded.  There
is enough Japanese language and culture in the novel to make Tokyo
feel like "somewhere else" (to us non-Japanese of course) without
being too much to overpower someone who isn't familiar with the
subjects.  

Orrorsh is really just a sideline to the story, but since the last
half of the novel occurs there it is a major sideline.  There is a
group of Victorians our heroine encounters that are nicely handled and
we do get a good viewpoint on how the Victorians operate in regard to
Core Earthers.  The jungle surrounding the research lab out heroine
works at has a lot of promise for creepy, scary events but when they
actually do happen the horror of the situations (zombies, killer
tentacle plant things) just aren't translated properly - don't expect
anything horrorific or nasty to jump out at you from the pages.  A
minor letdown, but understandable.

Near the end our heroine ecounters a party of Storm Knights and she
learns what is really going on in the world.  Most of it is actually a
quite good introduction to TORG and how things work (at least from a
character's viewpoint), though the bit on reality bubbles comes out
wrong - it sounds too much like someone explaining the rules of the
game instead of how a character would explain things.  Other than that
though, definitely recommended reading for newbies.  The ubiquitous
invoked reality storm near the end is also done quite well - a good
explaination of what happens in a reality storm.

One problem with the final dramatic scene is that the Storm Knights
die much too easily!  I guess they were just low on Possibilities and
didn't have any good cards in their pools (or the NPCs just roll
really well!)  (Before you start saying Orrorsh is supposed to be like
that, Orrorsh doesn't figure into the end of the adventure; it's
Nippon all the way.)

So if you've got someone you want to introduce to TORG, give them this
book instead of the initial trilogy.  As our heroine makes her way
along learning things, so will the reader.  Us old-timers can still
enjoy the book and get a good idea of how things are in Nippon Tech
too.  

-- 
Kansas Jim (Jim Ogle, TORG guru)                               /|
jogle@aoc.nrao.edu (NRAO-VLBA, Socorro New Mexico)           o| |-
"I'd be apathetic if I cared."                              /|\\|