Welcome to a world of middle-grade horror inspired by everyone’s favourite animatronic pizza parlour. Five Nights at Freddy’s is a staple in indie horror (and now mainstream horror as well), that of course they decided to open up their lore-filled world into the land of literature. We saw the introduction of FNAF into our YA bookshelves with The Silver Eyes, The Twisted Ones, and The Fourth Closet, but now we’ve got a Goosebumps and Fear Street anthology of horrific tales.
R.L. Stine was the fear-inducing author for the 90s babies, and now we’ve got Scott Cawthon and friends to ignite scares in the masses. I will say, if we had a scale I would put Fazbear Frights scarier than Goosebumps and Fear Street. I guess kids these days can take more horror (I mean, look at the world we’re living in… it’s pretty darn scary these days).
This book has three stories focusing on different kids. Each of these children deals with pieces of lore from the FNAF series – creepy men dressed in animal suits tormenting children and animatronics coming to life. The mind games played in this book are quite intriguing, although I found each of the stories focused on a very different type of horror. Let me get into the meat of this:
- Oswald goes “Into the Pit”
Oswald’s story gets off to a bit of a rough start for me. To be honest, the writing for the first fifteen pages was very rough and made me want to put the book down. I did end up taking a break and after a few Game Theory binges of FNAF theories I came back into the book ready to binge and not DNF. After I shuffled my way through the murky waters of the first fifteen or so pages, the story really picked up. We see Oswald traveling through time when he goes into a musty old ball pit (since that seems to be the only thing to do in town other than read books, wander the street aimlessly, and eat pizza). He goes back in time to the original diner where I believe the bite of 1984/1987 happened. We see Mike (don’t get me started on Mike…) and a creepy man in a rabbit suit, and eventually some other lore FNAF fans will reminisce from the video game series. This story is SUPER good and is a great start to the series. Honestly, other than the rough start it was quite the hit! If you’re not a FNAF fan, it probably won’t make any sense but since I am quite the lore fanatic… This one was good.
5/5 for Oswald and creepy bunny man for a FNAF super fan like me.
3/5 for a general horror fan who isn’t ready to fangirl about a dude named Mike.
- Sarah just wants “To Be Beautiful”
This one was a real stinker for me with the fat phobia and ugly teenage girl syndrome. Honestly, I know that us girls suffer from self esteem issues and that’s likely never going away but can we stop with that being a main story line IN THE FIRST SET OF STORIES. My gears were grinding with some poor, young girl having body issues and making that the whole plot of the story. Sure, the animatronic that helps make her beautiful (which was really intriguing by the way, but my rant isn’t over yet) and all… but it just HURT MY SOUL. All caps. Feel my pain. That pushed the story down my ranking system quite a bit.
The lore sections? The animatronic girl with superpowers who is super creepy? On point! The superpowers going on? Super intriguing. Honestly, very creative story, and I’m impressed with the thought. I’m curious what happened after the fact, but I don’t think we’re getting a sequel to this one. Come on Scott, do a Night of the Living Dummy-type sequel for me. I’m super curious.
But, walking the tightrope of female body image was a real NOPE for me.
3/5 for the FNAF lore.
1/5 for harmful stereotypes.
- Millie needs to “Count The Ways”
This story… was dull for me. It was a bit more of a mind game for myself trying to read it because I just didn’t like the story telling or understood why this one was here. I found it super boring hearing all of the different ways someone could die. It wasn’t scary and it was just… counting the ways you can be murdered. It wasn’t all that special. Sure, it fit with the FNAF lore and it can be creepy (depending on what type of horror scares you), but this one was a low blow for the final story in this book. It was just… boring. I wanted more UMPH and more energy. This one was a snore fest for me.
Also, another girl who doesn’t get a cool story and doesn’t get the best of endings. RIP female empowerment in the FNAF series. But ya’ll… did we really expect that?
2/5 overall because I just couldn’t get into the story.
Epilogue – From the too many theory videos I’ve watched, I have learned that each of the epilogues will tie together to a bigger story. This is going to be a long, painful story for me to read since I have a feeling I won’t get the rest of this series for quite some time… Maybe not the greatest marketing technique for memory, but also an intriguing marketing technique to try to trick people into still reading… We’ll see how this one goes.
Overall, the FNAF series has a brand new anthology I will slowly work my way through. My inner fangirl-y FNAF fan wants to continue reading Fazbear Frights and devour every piece of lore she can get. Is this a real winner? Not really. I like Goosebumps more for the fun and energy, but I will continue reading on this series to see if they improve and what other creepy, crawly, intriguing stories will come out of the combined lore power of Scott Cawthon’s sensational video game series.
Two out of five stars.
Have you read any of the FNAF books? Or are you into video games? Let me know your lore theories in the comment section!
If you want to pick this book up to read and theorize with me, here are some helpful links:
Amazon.ca
Amazon.com
Kobo
Indigo
B&N
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