I'm not a huge TV watcher and I'm even less of a cartoon watcher. That said, even I will make an exception for Adventure Time. It's absolutely brilliant. At first glance it's a colourful cartoon for children about Finn and Jake, a monster fighting duo in the land of Oo. Under the surface though, there are enough shady jokes and one-liners to keep any self-respecting adult amused.
Titan Books were nice enough to send me a copy of The Adventure Time Encyclopedia to review and I jumped at the chance. Obviously it won't make a whole lot of sense to you if you've never seen the show, but go watch it right now and I'll wait here for you.
*taps foot*
Done? Awesome, isn't it?
Anyway. The encyclopaedia looks great. It's slightly taller than A5 and it's that high-quality hardback material that's very, very sturdy. The cover illustration is shiny and slightly embossed and it generally looks very impressive. My point is this is almost a collector's item, not just a reference book for children. A lot of effort has gone into the appearance of this book and it shows.
There's a handy contents page at the front, which tells us that this book is in five parts, dealing with the Adventure Time characters, inhabitants, the Land of Oo itself, spells and magic and finally the Nightosphere (Underworld). It did bug me a little that not every page had easily discernible page numbers, which does slightly defeat the purpose of a contents page, but I survived.
The concept of the encyclopaedia is that it was written by Hunson Abadeer, who is more-or-less the Devil. His daughter, Marceline read it and passed it on to Finn and Jake, the heroes of the show. Peppered throughout the book are notes and comment from all three of them, in different coloured pens for easy reference. This is quirky and fun, although occasionally I feel that it tries too hard. As in, the character's catchphrases are repeated slightly too often with too many misspellings etc.
On the whole though, it works very well. The idea that it was compiled by Hunson Abadeer is a nice though - the show itself is told from the perspective of the good guys, so it's a whole new slant on Adventure Time to hear from the baddies. It makes the encyclopaedia so much more interesting than a standard 'Guide to the TV Show' would be.
It's not set out like a traditional guide would be either. The information is presented in a variety of different creative ways that would be sure to keep anybody interested. There's a 'Teen Zine' interview with Marceline, for example, and a set of user instructions for BMO.
It looks absolutely unbelievable, which adds to me conclusion that it's a nice book to just own as well as read. The original illustrations and design are just perfect and I could spent hours just looking at how well put together it is.
To conclude, this isn't just a marketing gimmick. It's a beautiful, well-crafted and creative guide to the Land of Oo. It may not be all that useful for learning something new about the characters, but it's definitely worth owning for any even semi-fan of Adventure Time.
You can even win a copy of The Adventure Time Encyclopaedia, thanks (again) to the nice people at Titan. Just fill in the Raffly below and I'll be in touch with the winner to get your address.
UK only, as I'm not the one sending out the prize.
a Rafflecopter giveaway
Entered! What a wonderful prize :)
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