Mount Coronet

Very interesting. And I must say I'm surprised that one book covers all of the year... Would have thought they would split it into multiple books.

 

Also what happened to your blog man? It seems so... empty without the stuff on the sides.

As I understand it, book sales were really poor through the last several years of G1, so I can understand that they might want to take it slow for now and see if there's a market or not.

 

The blog thing I'm actually having difficulty wording an explanation for so unfortunately all I can really say is "That just kinda happened" I'm sorry

As I understand it, book sales were really poor through the last several years of G1, so I can understand that they might want to take it slow for now and see if there's a market or not.

 

The blog thing I'm actually having difficulty wording an explanation for so unfortunately all I can really say is "That just kinda happened" I'm sorry

Hmm makes sense I suppose. Tread carefully as they say.

 

and that's a fair enough response. Just was curious.

Is it fair to compare the current Bionicle series to the book sales of G1.  Yeah, sales were pretty bad there... they went from 5 books a year to three to two... and then I think the book for the last year got canceled entirely and Greg just posted it online, and even then it was a basic retelling of the comics and Mata Nui Saga.    But while I haven't been following them, I do know they have a good amount of books for Ninjago and Friends, so I assume those book sells must be doing well.

 

Ekimu’s first words after being woken up are “You’re late”.

 

A Toa is never late. Nor is he early. He arrives precisely when he means to!

Is it fair to compare the current Bionicle series to the book sales of G1.  Yeah, sales were pretty bad there... they went from 5 books a year to three to two... and then I think the book for the last year got canceled entirely and Greg just posted it online, and even then it was a basic retelling of the comics and Mata Nui Saga.    But while I haven't been following them, I do know they have a good amount of books for Ninjago and Friends, so I assume those book sells must be doing well.

 

Ninjago and Friends are a different case—both themes are more popular and successful than Bionicle EVER was. The classic Bionicle chapter books struggled to find an audience, as did the Hero Factory chapter books, so it would make some degree of sense to tread carefully here. Also, neither the Ninjago nor Friends chapter books (nor the Hero Factory chapter books, for that matter) are meant to be a "saga"—neither series tells the complete story of those series, instead focusing on isolated adventures for the most part. Assuming Lego wanted Bionicle's series to be more comprehensive, it makes sense that they'd try to cram more of the story into each book. And considering how late in the year this chapter book is being released, it makes sense that they'd want to include not just the winter wave story but the story related to the recently-released summer sets as well.

 

This first book definitely isn't perfect, but I'm going to cut the series some slack considering it's starting fresh with a new writer and a new canon, so some growing pains are to be expected (and the parts of the book not explicitly based on the animations are stellar). There will be a second Bionicle chapter book released in December titled "Revenge of the Skull Spiders". That may well be a "bridge novel" connecting this year's story with the next year's, like some of the best classic Bionicle chapter books, so we'll see what that has to offer.

 one book for one year of story has happened to Bionicle before. the books retroactively written for years 1 through 3 (except mask of light) served their purpose just fine imo (aside from all their weird Hapka-isms).

I wouldn't count 03 (Makuta's Revenge, Mask of Light, Tales of the Masks), and 01 and 02 (and their books) do have a few key differences I think.

 

For one, as you said, they were written retroactively--up until that point we didn't really have much specific info on those story years.  We had the comics (nine short comics, not a lot of room to cover things), MNOG, and the Bohrok Animations (the latter two of which did cover a lot, but was from the viewpoint of Matoran as opposed to the books' focus on the Toa).  Everything we were getting in the first two Chronicles books was expanding upon past story arcs and giving us even more details than we previously had.  The new book does give us some new information (which is why I made this blog post), but a lot of it, especially the second half, is a recap of the webisodes, which are still fresh in our minds.  That's certainly not a bad thing, of course, and helps a lot with G1's issues of inconsistency and making fans go far out of their way to get a complete picture, but as far as book sales specifically, why buy it if the main events can be watched online for free?  Especially since you've already spent all your money on the toys themselves.

 

Also, although the basic structure of the arcs are all the same (find masks/Krana and then fight the bad guys), 01 and 02 were presented more as months of the Toa just sort of off searching with only a few specific instances of success presented, and then they go in for their final confrontation.  15 only has one mask for each Toa to find, which sounds more manageable (and us old fans might remember the Great Disks, where each Toa's success was presented in Great detail), and the "final confrontation" was set up as the whole second half of the year--yet was resolved in about as much time as the journeys into Mangaia and the Bohrok Nest.  Plus, the Skull Army gave us our first individual, named villains of G1, and yet they (even their boss) are each handled very quickly and not given any chance to shine.  01 and 02 stuck to horde villains so that the pace of dealing with them wouldn't feel like cheating*, and at the very least, Makuta and the Bahrag had...presence, I suppose?  We had ideas of why they were there and what they wanted, and the incompleteness there was presented as a sense of mystery.  I won't spoil the ending of the new book, but I feel it's handled a bit differently here.

 

(*The Shadow Toa are a bit different, but as doppelgangers you can probably get away with not giving them a whole lot of special characterization since they're alternate manifestations of characters we've already been following, plus they still got more screentime than any of the Skull Army members.  I still have plenty of complaints/unfulfilled hopes regarding the Shadow Toa, but those aren't entirely relevant to this discussion...ditto for Kaita, why did we not do more with Kaita and Shadow Toa arrrrrgh)

 

Shoot this got long

 

Anyway, Island of Lost Masks is by no means a bad book!  It has a different job to fill than even its closest G1 counterparts, or at the very least different expectations to face, and even if it comes off a bit awkward I'd say it does do that job pretty well.  I'd understand if someone wanted to skip this one and just follow the webisodes, but if nothing else, it's here to make us look forward to the next book and what mysterious content it might have to offer!