Review for Dawn of the Planet of the Apes novel

Pretty good. Christian Rummel is a good narrator; calm and measured.

In regards to how the novelization adapts the movie, it does a mostly good job. The book goes smoothly and does a good job of describing the details of the environments, the events, the growth of the apes, the different characters' POVs. It does a good job of describing Caesar's internal conflict, his desire to ensure peace, his intelligence, and further explores his reasoning for killing Koba. His claim that Koba "is not ape" makes more sense when he realizes that Koba, in his quest for power and revenge, has tried to take what makes humans powerful.

I also like how the novelization shows Rocket's reaction to the death of his son Ash at the hands of Koba; it causes him to turn against Koba and he angrily shouts "you kill my son!" at him.

My only major criticism of the novelization is it's handling of Koba's character. The novelization does a good job exploring Koba’s POV most of the time, describing his conflict between his loyalty to Caesar and his vendetta against the humans, his cunning and calculation, his cynical beliefs on what is strength and what is weakness, his noble, but misguided belief that he is doing what's best for all apes, and his fear that the humans will inevitably try to oppress the apes again or kill them all if given their power/electricity back. I also like how the novel implies he feels betrayed by the other apes not helping him when Caesar nearly kills him at the dam. However, the novel never really tries to get the reader to feel Koba's pain; the damage reawakened inside him by the reappearance of the humans. While Koba's past as an abused lab ape and his anger over it is mentioned several times, it never goes into detail about it, and the novel never shows him remembering his personal past traumas. I thought a more powerful way to depict Koba's descent into madness and villainy would be to show him having flashbacks and nightmares about his past; basically re-traumatizing him. Plus, there is a major continuity error here, something that directly contradicts Koba’s backstory as told in the prequel novel “Dawn of the Planet of the Apes: Firestorm” by Greg Keyes. The error is that this novel states that Koba only has the "vaguest memory" of his mother and thus can't understand how Blue Eyes feels about losing a parent. This, despite the fact that in "Firestorm" Koba is shown to very clearly remember his mother and how she was killed by a human, which was the first tragedy he suffered at the hands of humans and one of the reasons he hates them.

I also thought that the final chapter with the boat was a bit unnecessary.

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