A Review of a Mortal Kombat Novel by Jeff Rovin

I liked this book, but it is an odd reimagining of Mortal Kombat. It also gets somewhat confusing near the end when the bad guys are trying to open a portal to Hell. The story from the video games is in here, but it feels like it has been put through a blender.

The reasons for the Mortal Kombat tournament are reworked. The number of realms is simplified to two, and several names have been changed. The characters’ origins have been reworked, but the core parts are mostly intact.

It is a confusing book for people who follow Mortal Kombat’s lore. This book also makes me wonder how close Midway protected the story in the game. It is such an odd book to talk about when you know the story in the three original games.

Story

The story starts in a small village in China. I’m guessing this takes place in the 400s, but I’m unsure as a timeline isn’t established. It is necessary, but it would’ve been nice.

Kung Lao is heading off to discover something. It has something to do with an entity called P’an Ku. Don’t worry; he will eventually meet Raiden. It is written as Rayden in the book. I went back to check if the spelling changed in the game, but it seems like it didn’t.

We switch over to Shang Tsung, where things get strange. Shang creates a symbol and tries to summon demons. Which he successfully does. Shao Khan and Neatherrealm are portrayed as a version of hell. Shang is implied to be a demon but was reborn on Earth, which is confusingly named Motherrealm.

The other realms are never brought up. The other gods aren’t mentioned. Much of the lore from the first three games is abandoned in favor of this simple good vs evil plot. It gets stranger.

Shang Tsung sets up the Mortal Kombat tournament as a way to gather souls. These souls are used to widen the portal and allow Shao Khan to invade Earth. How many souls does he need? No idea. How many tournaments take place? Thousands. We only read about one of them. Does the book center around the tournament? Nope.

Raiden gives Kung Lao an amulet. This amulet helps him win a bunch of Mortal Kombat tournaments in a row. He defeats Shang Tsung at the end of each of these tournaments. Every time he loses, Shang Tsung loses a part of his soul.

In the ninth tournament, Kung Lao was defeated by Goro, but the amulet wasn’t used. We then jump 1500 years into the future. At least, I think that is how far we go. Kung Lao is still alive, but it is a different Kung Lao, and I have no idea if they’re supposed to be related.

Apparently, Mortal Kombat tournaments have been going on this whole time. Shang Tsung wants to get the amulet and hires Kano to get it. From what I understood, Shang Tsung believes the amulet will give him the power to open the portal.

I do not know if he had been trying to get the amulet for the last 1500 years. It also wasn’t clear to me how many more souls were needed to open the portal. I don’t understand the rules of this book.

This is where Liu Kang, Sonya, Sub-Zero, and Scorpion come into the story. Liu Kang is a member of the White Lotus Society; he is working with Sonya Blade to take down Kano. Scorpion is given an altered origin story. Sub-Zero killed him, but a lesser god named Yu is responsible for merging Scorpion with his son. It is odd and made me want to look up the origin story again. I’ll get more into this later.

At some point, all of our characters end up together. Oh, Reptile also shows up. This is where some strangeness happens. Shang Tsung merged Kano and Kung Lao. They get the amulet and bring it to Shang Tsung, and it turns out that the sorcerer can’t use it for reasons.

Our heroes attack the bad guys. Kung Lao tricks Shang Tsung into closing the portal. Then, the two sides leave each other alone. This was a confusing ending.

Shang Tsung invokes the laws of his island, which Raiden and Kung Lao are apparently bound by. Sonya and Liu Kang, correctly, in my opinion, call bullshit on this. Unfortunately, Raiden’s opinion wins out, and Shang Tsung is left to his own devices, and the book teases a sequel that we won’t ever get.

Confusion

This book needs to be viewed as its own thing. Everything falls apart when you try to look at it as a retelling of the story from the games. There are so many changes that it has to be seen as a new product or an alternate timeline.

At first, I was wondering why Katana was missing from the story. Then I remembered that most of the lore about the realms had been dropped from this book. She wouldn’t fit in this new demonic invasion story.

Katana is supposed to be a princess from one of the realms that Shao Khan had conquered. I don’t know as much about Mortal Kombat lore as people who follow the games, but I do know that there are supposed to be more than two realms and that Earth isn’t called Mother Realm.

Scorpion’s origin is odd, to say the least. Parts of it are there, but then we bring in a demi-god and have him possess his son instead of being an undead ninja. It was a strange decision to toss in some other stuff but keep in how Sub-Zero killed him.

So, there are other gods besides Raiden. However, they don’t matter all that much. The tournaments don’t seem to matter anymore, and Shang Tsung needs an arbitrary number of souls. It is explained that only specific souls will work, but it isn’t very consistent.

The amulet is also odd. I’m unsure how it works and don’t know why it was needed. Everything about this story felt off to me.

Final Thoughts

I didn’t like this book. If I hadn’t known the story of Mortal Kombat, I might have had a different opinion. The book isn’t bad, but it takes too many liberties with the game’s story for my liking.

Some strange decisions were made with the story. It doesn’t simplify things but changed it into a demonic invasion that downplayed the tournament. It would’ve been different if the story of Mortal Kombat hadn’t been so developed, and the author had to fill in the gaps.

If I remove the video games from the equation, this book is okay. It does have some interesting ideas, and the characters are decent. Unfortunately, I have to bring in the video games, and that makes the book disappointing.