Five Nights at Freddy's- The Twisted Ones- book review

By Mark Rodriguez

I finally found some time to sit down and read this one, enjoying the bright sunny day and cool breeze as I flip the pages. It continues the story of Charlotte getting both a grip on her past as well as the events of the first book and tells a tale that completely goes in another direction of the games.

The Twisted Ones starts a year after the last book with Charlie getting used to get college life. She is mostly racked with some sort of survivors guilt when her twin brother was killed instead of her by Afton in a Golden Bonnie suit when they were children. She always had the feeling her twin was watching her somehow but was now starting to lose that connection, leaving her desperate to get it back as well as find answers. All this comes to a head when she goes to meet back up with her friend John near the town of Hurricane.

Upon arriving, she runs into officer Clay who wants her to confirm something he found. It was a murder victim but the markings all over him look like ones made by someone wearing a springlock animatronic suit and having all the springlocks snap on him. Things get worse when Charlie discovers a second victim, a young woman that can easily be confused for her. She is now convinced that there is a new breed of animatronics after her for some reason.

It's up to Charlie with help from her friends John, Jessica and Officer Clay to find out what these new animatronics are and where they came from. On top of that, a storm has hit the town of Hurricane in Charlie's absence, so the crew gets to see the fate of Charlie's childhood home, the old Freddy's restaurant as well as the original Freddy, Bonnie, Chica, Foxy and Golden Freddy.

My opinions-

This was a good read and it felt faster than before. While the first book had the burden of introducing so many characters and getting the reader to care about them, here we can continue where they left off. There are also less characters to keep track of since most of them have moved out due to the events of the first book, which makes sense. If I barely survived being trapped in a restaurant with killer animatronics, I'd want to get the hell out of there too. It was easier to keep track of John and Jessica than the whole gang from before.

With the murders starting almost as soon as Charlie returns to Hurricane, the mystery starts right away and the reader can get invested. While the first book featured the classic restaurant with the original animatronics from FNAF1, this story takes a whole other direction altogether. Other than Balloon Boy, this book doesn't feature Toy Bonnie or Toy Chica from FNAF2, and despite the cover, the Nightmare animatronics from FNAF4 aren't here either. This book featured a new trio of 'Twisted' Animatronics, namely a 'Twisted' version of Freddy, Bonnie, Foxy and a new Wolf animatronic that never gets a name in the book. Also despite some art and Funko Pops, I don't recall seeing a 'Twisted' Chica in the book.

These Twisted animatronics look smooth and simplistic, covered in plastic shells that don't have many details. However they're equipped with a small disc that sends out high frequency signals. These signals make anyone near them dizzy and nauseous, but also see the robots as living nightmare monsters, covered in fur and more ghoulish detail. The animatronics are full of springlocks as well, and their main form of attack is to open themselves up and force a person inside them, crushing them to death as all the springlocks break free.

It's hinted in the book that the effects vary on the person, that if a regular person that never lived the horrors of the first book might be fooled and see the animatronics as cute and adorable things due to the disc. Since the gang have already lived through the encounter with the haunted FNAF1 crew, their own fears make the Twisted animatronics look like hellish monstrosities.

While the book takes the game's story in a whole new direction, it does bring in a few ideas that make it into the series. The Twisted Animatronics being able to fit a person inside them and carry them around is similar to what some of the Funtime Animatronics can do in FNAF Sister Location, the fifth game in the series. Also it's discovered that the mind warping discs were created by Afton Robotics, which shows that besides William Afton being a child murderer, he can also build his own animatronics. This also carries over into Sister Location.

This was a pretty interesting read. It gets quicker to the mystery and it's easier to keep track of fewer characters as well. This also sparks curiosity of these brand new deadly animatronics. The Twisted Ones are on the loose.