| Title | : | Tom Clancys The Division: New York Collapse : A Survival Guide to Urban Disaster |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | 1452148279 |
| ISBN-10 | : | 9781452148274 |
| Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | Paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 176 |
| Publication | : | First published March 8, 2016 |
Tom Clancys The Division: New York Collapse : A Survival Guide to Urban Disaster Reviews
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So, Tom Clancy's The Division: New York Collapse is really a two for one deal. The basic book is a survival guide to a long term collapse of society. It goes through amazing details about how to survive, what to use, where to go, and what to think. Wow, it was a true eye opener. If I haven't mentioned it before, I'm a prepper. Yep, I take emergency preparedness seriously, probably why I like all those end of the world and dystopian books. So, the guide alone would have been something I would buy.
The interactive/second part of the deal is a personal journal written by April, a woman living during the collapse of New York City. Her husband was a biologist, killed for his germ research. She carries the survival guide with her, using it to record her journey and to unravel what exactly happened in New York. She also leaves little puzzles throughout the book in case it ever falls into the wrong hands.
The journal is written in several colors of ink. Each color represents a different period of time. So, when reading, you often find yourself reading notes that involve different time periods of April's survival. "She" also leaves different maps, transit cards, and other interactive products within the pages.
This is a really fun book. I give it 4.5 stars, and that's only because it is a bit hard to follow smoothly. -
I’ve been playing The Division over the holidays, as it’s my favourite Christmas-themed game (although I’m not sure there are many other Christmas-themed games out there …). Post-apocalypse + Christmas decorations. Yes please!
Anyway, I finished all the main missions but suffered a bit of Division withdrawal when I came off it. I don’t have a Playstation Plus account, so endless plundering in the Dark Zone is a no-go for me. So I did a quick search and found a tie-in book called New York Collapse: A Survival Guide to Urban Catastrophe by the pseudonymous Warren Merchant.
Now, I’m always a bit sceptical about tie-in media: films of books (we all know they rarely work), films of games (which work even less!), games of films, companion guides, books of games, etc. There’s always a bit of a sense of me-tooing and cashing in on fans. If a book carries the name of a game, it can get sales based on that and not necessarily on the quality of the book.
So with a bit of trepidation, but reassured by the abundance of good reviews, I bought New York Collapse. And I’m so glad I did!
It’s actually supposed to be the survival guide that crops up in the game. A character appears in echoes (playbacks from surveillance equipment) called April Kelleher, and you can see in the game some of the moments that she writes about in this book. The survival guide itself is a guide to surviving a TEOTWAWKI event (The End Of The World As We Know It). In the margins are the scrawlings of April Kelleher as she survives through the apocalypse in Manhatten, in parallel with the events of the game itself. Rather suspiciously, the advice centres almost entirely around an outbreak of weaponised smallpox in Manhatten. Handy, considering that’s exactly what has happened in The Division game. But that’s all part of the mystery that April is trying to work out while trying to survive in an extremely hostile environment, with the constant threat of infection, federal aid collapsing and gangs whittling down what remains of the civilian population. The survival guide is also full of puzzles that April (and you) needs to work out in order to locate the author, Warren Merchant, who is clearly trying to get her to meet him for whatever mysterious reason. He clearly knows more about what’s going on.
The book is really well produced to look like it’s been through the apocalypse and back. The cover is all torn up and there’s blood and muck all over the pages. Rather than just using a handwriting font, they’ve actually got someone to hand write the margin scrawlings so it looks authentic. On top of that, there are bits and pieces waiting to fall out, which are highly realistic apocalypse souvenirs and clues that April picks up. It honestly feels like this is April’s actual copy.
Although I have played the game, I think you could get a great amount of entertainment out of The New York Collapse even if you haven’t played or even heard of The Division. At it’s core, it’s a highly realistic, engaging and original post-apocalypse story. If you’ve played the game, this adds a little more context, and you’ll probably have a deeper understanding of some of the references, but I really don’t think it’s necessary. The only frustrating aspect is that you don’t really get an ending. If you haven’t played the game, this will probably feel like the first in a trilogy. It’s got that embellished-beginning storyline, with the ending feeling like that’s the point at which it’s all going to kick off. But alas, this is a standalone. Not being party to the Dark Zone in the game, which is where the end of the book points you, I have no idea what the outcome is of April’s story either. This vexes me because it feels a little bit like it’s pushing you to spend even more money than you already have, and when you don’t have much of a gaming budget, like me, it can leave you feeling frustrated and unfulfilled. I may never know what happens without resorting to Youtube, and where’s the fun in that?
Anyway, that’s why this has got four stars, not five. A book without a resolution and with a bid to drag more money you don’t have out of you can’t get five stars in my book of principles. In terms of production and intelligence and authenticity and the exercise for your own brain, this is a five star book. Whether you’ve played The Division or not, if you like apocalypses, conspiracies and you want to learn a bit about surviving in an urban environment, put this on your reading list.
Now I’m off to prep my go-bag. -
In 2013, J.J. Abrams and Doug Dorst released S., a piece of metafiction that consisted of a reproduction of a character's copy of a book that exists within the project's fiction. The multi-layered story was told through the text of the book, the book's footnotes, the notes written in the margins of said book by the two people reading it, various scraps of paper stuck between the pages, and even some stuff on the Internet. It was a fascinating, original approach to storytelling and a love letter to the printed word.
In 2016, Ubisoft (or some partner) heavily borrowed from this conceit to create a product tie-in for their newest video game, The Division. (Or Tom Clancey's The Division, if you want to be technical.) Unsurprisingly, this product tie-in doesn't stand on its own two feet as well as the book that (probably) inspired it. But New York Collapse still ends up being far more enjoyable than it has any right to be, considering that it is unambiguously first and foremost a piece of merchandise.
To understand the book, it helps to understand the game it's based on. The Division is set a couple of months or so into a catastrophic pandemic that has ravaged New York city. A terrorist of some sort has infected a number of dollar bills with an engineered virus, and released them in Manhattan on Black Friday to be quickly and vigorously circulated -- death by consumer culture. Within weeks, the city has descended into complete chaos. The government has quarantined the island, and further quarantined certain neighborhoods; all public services and infrastructure have started to come undone; most people who haven't escaped have died; and various criminal and government-turned-criminal factions have laid claim to pieces of the city. Violence ensues, and a mysterious government organization springs to action, deploying its agents -- that's you! -- to quell the violence, restore order, and try to get the ball rolling on some sort of recovery. (Mostly, you kill people and collect better and better guns.)
As you play the game, as with many games generally and Ubisoft's especially, you find various collectible objects throughout the world that provide additional fragments of narrative to flesh out the world beyond the game's core plot. For example: cell phones with voicemail messages that, when pieced together, recount various New Yorkers' final days in mid-apocalypse Manhattan. There are various sets of collectibles, one of which is a series of pages torn from one woman's journal. These journal entries are written not in a blank notebook, however, but in the pages of an oddly specific survival guide for life in a catastrophe-ridden Manhattan.
The woman is named April Kelleher, the survival guide is called New York Collapse, and you are holding her copy in your hands. (The pages that were torn out and strewn around Manhattan for the video game player to find have been restored; try not to think about it.)
The primary text of the book, guide for how to survive a society-destroying pandemic in Manhattan, is naturally less engaging than the novel-within-a-meta-novel that served as S.'s primary text, but it's still pretty engaging. Because the guide is describing the world April Kelleher is living through with bizarre prescience and specificity, it almost functions as the text of a novel, albeit less flavorful. The guide describes the situation, and April's margin notes contextualize that information by relating it to her own life and offering specific anecdotes. These notes are written, again like in S., in various colors to signify different points in April's journey, and conveniently she keeps a tally of days in one of the first pages, so you can easily reference this to know when exactly she e.g. lost the black pen and started writing in pencil.
In addition to merely trying to survive in an imploding society, April Kelleher is trying to solve a number of mysteries. First, she's trying to find out why and by whom her husband, some sort of biotech researcher, was killed before her eyes in the early days of the outbreak. Second, she's trying to figure out what's up with the guide's pseudonymous author, Warren Merchant. Given the book's eerie accuracy and narrow focus, it seems plausible that Merchant perhaps knew that plans were underway for an attack of this sort, and April has uncovered a number of hidden messages in the book that add weight to this hypothesis.
Part of the fun of the book is unraveling these puzzles. Secret coded messages are scattered throughout, although they seem to come in only two flavors: already partially solved and easy to finish, and so obtuse that you're not sure it's a puzzle. As such, the puzzles fail to draw you into an ever-deepening rabbit hole; instead, you'll just solve the easy ones as you go and not bother digging deeper for any more.
As the puzzles suggest, there's a bit of a mystery in the book, a circling around a conspiracy that keeps you engaged. Unfortunately, all this hinting and elliptical storytelling never amounts to much. There is no big denouement, no payoff for all the hints and puzzles and vague references. I guess this book's creators borrowed that from J.J. Abrams as well. The Division's world is an interesting, rich setting for mid-apocalyptic stories; April Kelleher is an interesting, relatable character; and the book tantalizingly skirts the edges of some sort of Big Secret throughout its brisk 176 pages. But after all that, it just sort of fades out unceremoniously. Perhaps the big reveal is being saved for the inevitable tie-in for the game's sequel.
(Of course, given the nature of the book, I can't say that for sure. Maybe there's some big reveal hidden in an undiscovered secret message, or on some website the book was nudging me towards. But if there is, I didn't find it.)
I can't say how much you'll enjoy this book if you haven't played the video game. I've been playing the Division on and off for two years, and am fairly immersed in its world. April Kelleher's story takes place largely before the events of the game, so the book serves as an interesting prequel, fleshing out the pandemic's heretofore hinted-at early days. It also provides a deeper focus on the catastrophe's human component, as opposed to the tactical considerations (e.g. where to stand to safely kill a bunch of Bad Guys) that occupy most of your mental space while you play the game.
I got this book against my better judgement (it's a video game tie-in!) mostly because I'm so enamored of S. and it's meta-fictional construction, and books of this sort are few and far between. Given my expectations, the gamble has largely paid off. A piece of great literature New York Collapse is not, but it's a thoroughly entertaining read, especially for someone already familiar with its world. -
If
S. and
The Zombie Survival Guide: Complete Protection from the Living Dead had a baby, it would be New York Collapse by Alex Irvine. True, there are no zombies or love stories happening in the margins. But it is a survival book with handwritten notes and artifacts inserted by a woman who is desperately trying to survive New York after a weaponized version of smallpox is released into the general public.
While I really enjoyed the handwritten notes, puzzles, and inserted artifacts, I felt the book was slowed down by the prose of the manual. I learned some interesting tidbits, such how far water will travel up in a building by the pure force of gravity (versus with the aid of electric pumps). But while I said "oh cool" out loud a few times, these mental floss-esque knowledge bubbles weren't enough to sustain a high-pace.
If you are a fan of experimental literature and survival stories, I highly recommend giving this a read. (Also, for those curious, I haven't played the game at all, and I still found it to be an enjoyable read, even without that transmedia connection.) -
If I hadn't played The Division, a video game for the latest generation of gaming systems, I'm not sure I would have enjoyed this book as much as I did. In The Division, the player takes on the role of a member of a secretive response unit that is called upon to save the day in times of utter societal collapse. The book serves as a living artifact for this setting, offering clues and filling in spaces to deepen your understanding as a player of what is really going on around you.
The book reads two ways: the first is a surprisingly thoughtful guide to surviving in the collapse of society after catastrophe; the second is a dialogue between a woman suffering through said collapse in modern Manhattan and the mysterious author of the survival guide. This second reading is told through notes in the margins and props found stuffed in the pages of the physical book.
As a piece of video game fiction, I think the whole package is very well executed--perhaps even superlative. As a novel for fans of Tom Clancy (it was written by a ghost-writer for the broader Clancy universe), the presentation might be a bit of a speedbump. -
I’ve been getting back into The Division over the last couple months (mainly because of how disappointing Destiny 2 was), and I figured this was the perfect time to dive into the backstory with the announcement of The Division 2. This was a cool concept for a book, a survival guide that had a bunch of notes from a person surviving through the catastrophe that is the backdrop for the game. It was definitely enjoyable, and I wish I had read it when the game first came out and I was more into it. The only thing I didn’t like (the tiniest of complaints really) was that it was slightly annoying to have to constantly turn the book on its side or upside down to read the notes in the margins. Though I liked it, and it definitely helped me appreciate the story in The Division much more as well as hyping up TD2.
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This book complements the videogame The Division, presenting a "realistic" survival guide combined with fictional notes of a survivor.
I bought this some time ago, when I was playing the game: while you play, you can find pages of this guide, and it describes an important part of the plot. Since The Division is set shortly after the outbreak of a deadly disease, it's easy to find similarities with the global Covid19 pandemic.
I guess the guide is at least partially inspired by
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opera..., combined with other events like Hurricane Katrina. It describes common "prepper" knowledge such as bug-out backpacks and survival tools, and adds some New York specifics to the mix.
This is not a real survival guide. It's written in-universe, replacing US agencies with their game counterparts, disguising game clues as real data, and following the game plot as the main narrative. However, since it follows real sources and keeps a realistic style, it's easy to find many resemblances to the Covid19 crisis (the main difference being that the guide describes a full collapse due to various cascading effects that haven't taken place in reality).
Depending on how badly the current crisis has hit you, this might not be your cup of tea. However, if you still like apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic fiction, and have played the game, read this. I wouldn't recommend it if you haven't played (or if you played and didn't enjoy it). -
This is the most unique book I've ever read. It's two stories entwined in one book, with the premise being that the book itself is an urban survival guide to help navigate the collapse of New York City, while written in the margins is the diary of April, who is actually navigating the collapse after a pandemic sweeps through. April's entries are not all chronological as she goes back and revisits sections of the book as needed, which also lends itself to the unique reading experience. Within the book are also artifacts (maps, post-its, etc) and puzzles to solve.
I'm currently playing through The Division game too, and reading the book made the game that much richer. However, the book and the game are both excellent as stand alone experiences.
I actually finished this book a few weeks ago, when the coronavirus was still just a specter to Americans, a frightening possibility on the horizon that many still believed would just go away. Now, seeing the stories coming out of NYC, The Division feels more relevant than ever. It's spooky to see the parallels between this story and real life, and even more chilling to realize that we are still just at the beginning. -
So I finished the first read through of this book. It's obviously going to take some more time to figure out the puzzles that I skimmed over in favor of digesting all the words. Perhaps it's because I have invested so much time into the game, but I feel very closely connected to this story, and the characters Warren Merchant and April Kelleher.
I will definitely be going back through to try and discover all the hidden secrets and puzzles.
In addition to being an entertaining work of fiction, the survival bits were very enlightening and have inspired me to try out a few of the solutions mentioned. Hopefully I would never need any of these survival skills, but I definitely want to remember as much as I can just in case.
This was a really fun read and I'm glad I had the opportunity to experience it! -
This most likely would have made more sense if I played the video game going by the other reviews. Which I don't I'm not a gamer but I got a copy from a friend and I like Clancy's writing so thought hell why not. I'd say read it if you play the game and enjoy it. Else you don't really need it on your TBR list
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What a great book. It’s very interesting to go though all the different stages of a collapse and see just how bad it could actually get in a situation like that. It makes you really want to do a little prep just in case something were to happen and with this book you will be able to have everything you would need.
There were some survival items that I wouldn’t have thought about before reading this but after finishing this book I feel like I could be at least decently prepared, much more prepared than I would have been had I not read it.
The survival aspect mixed with April’s perspective as she is going through the actual collapse of New York really does make this two books in one, you get the practical survival information and you a great story of as woman with no real experience just trying to survive one day at a time and find out the truth about what happened to her husband.
Definitely recommended -
The story held my interest enough to forgive the author(s) for their blatant plagiarism of Doug Dorst and JJ Abrams. I’m a sucker for annotating books, so even when the annotations are printed and part of the work I can’t help but get all gooey inside.
The story of April was a fun read. I’ve played a few hours of Division just to see if I wanted the book and now having read the book, I’m wanting to finish out the game. Marketing objective met.
Nice quick start to my 2019 reading challenge. -
Really excellent book, the way it's laid out is fantastic and is a quite involved read. The little additions like the cards, leaflets and maps are an excellent touch and really delves a bit deeper into The Division universe and what's going on outside of the games and before the games even occurred.
Also gives some pretty good survival advice in the real world which is great. Excellent read if you like your books a bit more involved. -
Good companion to The Division (1) video game. Nice association of her diary actions with the text of the guide. Re-reading in color order could be interesting to get the story more chronological; rather than the mixed times (colors changed as her writing instrument changed colors). that was really nicely done too.
Even mixed, the story was cohesive.
Nicely entertaining; though I might have preferred to read her story as a novella. -
A beautifully realised "found material" form, New York Collapse is a clever and creative tie-in to Ubisoft's world of The Division. Certainly a challenge to read with the actual fictional book content coupled with April Kelleher's notes and marginalia, it's one of the better movie or game linked books I've read.
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Writing a book in the margins of a survivalist field guide looks like a fancy good idea... till you start deciphering it while continously rotating the book. Entertaining but a little tiresome. It took me one long year!
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this is one of the best books I've read in a long time, is a good tie into the game with great survival tips and amazing story. I would recommend it to anyone who is a fan of the game or just wants a good urban survival book with a cliffhanger ending.
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I’m a big fan of The Division played it for about 2,000 hours and this book delivered. This book has a lot of connection between the game as you go around in game collecting Audio Logs and ECHOs it will tell you stories of April Kelleher and her adventures in The Division universe.
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Well put together, fun to read
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A fun companion peace to the Division games. I can't see any value in it for someone who doesn't play. Except maybe the novelty of the book.
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This is supposed to be a stand alone book. It's not. There's no ending that brings any resolution or explanation whatsoever. Really disappointing.
