Tomb Raider: The Beginning (Graphic Novel) Review

Tomb Raider: The Beginning is the prequel to 2013’s hit game title Tomb Raider. The book details the days leading up to the events depicted in the game, and gives you a deeper look into the characters.

Tomb Raider: The Beginning’s story is centered on the characters aboard the Endurance, the sailing vessel, and their interactions with each other. And it’s quite brief too, only about 50 pages long. Rhianna Pratchett wrote the book’s script, and she was a writer on the game also.

In all the story is very slow, dealing with subjects that are uninteresting to people looking for excitement and action, basically what Tomb Raider is known for. The plot deals most entirely with the money woes of the crew, and how they’re going to finance there expedition to the lost city from the game.

The Tomb Raider franchise is a story of excitement though, and intrigue; however this book goes completely the opposite direction using everyday drudgery and concerns as its plot mechanic. The characters are overshadowed by this, and ultimately their individual personalities get lost behind the plot. Lara, the series main protagonist plays a minimal role in the book too, appearing in only a handful of pages to deliver useless banter, and the rest of the time to play as a set piece.

The book’s artwork has been shrunk down to fit the physical size of this volume, which is 4”x6”. This causes any real detail in the art to vanish, and leave it looking quite plain and lack luster. The book’s size also adversely affects the dialog bubbles. Meaning that you may need a magnifying glass to read them. If the book was a full size, 6” x 9” or larger, the art could have looked better, but in this state it’s just too small to see any of the detail work, or any of the artist’s skills.

Final Thoughts:

If you’re a Tomb Raider fan you may want to give this book a read, however the story doesn’t deliver anything that the franchise is known for, Lara plays a minimal role, and the art work is sub par. It’s sad to see because this book could have succeeded is in telling the stories about these people, their inner thoughts, and their motivation to be here.

Tomb Raider: The Beginning tries to give some back stories, but they all feel forced and rushed. The overall story is a boring one dealing mostly with the mundane worries of the crew. After reading this book I don’t feel I knew anything more about the characters, and that’s really what this type of book should deliver.

If you liked the Tomb raider game, and want to know a little bit more about what happened before those events you can check this out, but if you feel content in the game’s story I would suggest skipping this one.