XXX

by Mel Odom

Book Overview

This newest action thriller from the team of director Rob Cohen and star Vin Diesel (The Fast And The Furious) follows Xander Cage, a charismatic extreme–sports fanatic who is recruited by a secret... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Mass Market Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0060514698
• Release Date: July 2002
• Publisher: HarperEntertainment
• Length: 384 Pages
• Weight: 0.45 lbs.
• Dimensions: 6.8" x 1.0" x 4.2"

Customer Reviews

The book is good but the movie is much better!

When action movies are made into novelizations they kind of lose their action movie-ness. For example: When Xander is going down the mountain with a furious avalanche following, you cannot turn that into words. Plus the other negative of this book is that it is too long. 69 chapters, almost 400 pages long. The movie is only 2 hours 2 minutes, you can squeeze that into 230 pages. Books like "Spider-Man" and "xXx" need too only be 150-250 pages long. The entire "A Walk To Remember" novel was only about 250 pages and the movie was only 1 hour 42 minutes. Oh well, complaints aside: this is a pretty good book. I recommend it only to people who have seen the movie and miss the action. People who expect every single bit of dialogue from the movie will be missing some words or so. So what, you say, well lets just say when replacing those words you get stuck with lots of scenery setup described word for word, wall for wall. But check it out!

The book wasn't better!

When I first saw the the xXx book on the shelf, I was completely suprised that someone would turn a movie like that into a book. I wasn't really sure if I was going to like it. I began to read it and soon found myself struggling to decide whether I liked the book or the movie better, each has advantages. Some advantages that the book had were that you really got inside the minds of the characters and some of the more confusing aspects of the movie were explained. Also, it had some scenes that weren't in the movie.The advantages of the movie were that everything was more realistic.Also, Vin Diesel brought a certain essence to the character of Xander that the book couldn't portray. My only suggestion is that you should go see the movie first and then read the book. I don't think I would have understood the book unless I saw the movie first. Over all it depend on what you like, you like movies see the movie, you like books read the book.

This is what a novelization SHOULD be!

Much more impressive than the average novelization, Mel Odom's narrative is absorbing and lyrical. You get into Xander's head and into the minds of the other characters with ease and comfort, and follow them through their adventures. In Odom's hands, the most obscure stunts become familiar to you and the wildest acts take on plausibility. You won't regret letting Odom take you through the movie's journey again, from a deeper point of view.