The Book of Darryl
by the Goggles
Look, let’s cut to the chase here. I love a good idea, and the Book of Darryl is full of good ideas. The premise: imagine that Jesus had a childhood friend that he formed a band with in the dark years that weren’t covered in the bible. Add to that some great illustrations, inspired by the look of those medieval paintings and have them come to life to elevate the story. Then, write some original music to give that band (a metal band, to boot) some more depth. Sounds great, right? I agree.
Well then, where did the Book of Darryl go wrong? Well, mostly because all of these ideas are poorly executed. The story, for one, is underwhelming and boring if not downright confusing. The premise is that this all takes place in the years of Jesus, yet there are modern gadgets around, like phones, cars, the internet, and electricity, but then Metal (and I would guess all of electronic music), and medicine haven’t been invented yet. It’s hard to follow what exactly I’m supposed to think is ground-breaking for these kids. And the story itself isn’t exactly gripping prose. It just reads like a poorly-written blog entry that could use some heaving editing and trimming. Then there are the interactive illustrations, which happen to be on every other page. You’re supposed to download an app and point your phone camera at the illustrations and wait for them to animate. It’s not just that half the time the animations are pointless, it’s that it completely breaks the flow of the book while you wait for the animation to load every other page. Mind you, the book encourages you to view these interactive illustrations. Finally, the music sounds cool but you only get to hear bits and pieces of it. I know there’s a webpage that you can go to and probably download and stream stuff, but listen, I have the book in front of me, I have the app, I am taking the time to check out all the little features, why not include all the music (or the link to them) somewhere in the story? Do I need to do extra legwork to check out the best part of this project?
So yeah, I’m sorry. I tried to like the Book of Darryl but it kind of fell flat on every front.
