It seems that you can’t keep a bad animatronic down. The world of Five Nights at Freddy’s (or FNAF) has grown from that scary game to a multimedia empire. Scott Cawthon, wrote a series of books that retold the story for adults. In this new series, Cawthon along with with some other talented writers have now written a series for younger readers, Fazbear Frights. This is not FNAF World type of stories. This is not even Goosebumps. Think back to Scary Stories to Tell in The Dark and you will know what type of story you are getting into. Scott has said that these stories might fill in some gaps from the games. This is not simply just explaining events. You have to look at themes and do a little thinking.
WARNING: SPOILERS BELOW!
Theme 1 : Body Snatching
It seems that the animatronics have a definite goal of taking over human bodies in order to continue some evil plan. The Lonely Freddy switches bodies with Alec, Stanely has his body filled with the giggling Minireenas and Sarah has her body taken by Baby. If the FNAF gang does not kill you, they will definitely take your body for a spin. I always believed that the animatronics were built with advanced AI and later became haunted with the murder of the children by Purple Guy. Their actions show that Baby’s goal in Sister Location is spread across the entire FNAF universe
Theme 2: Different Timelines
We are seeing two distinct timelines in these stories. In one, the FNAF Universe happened, but not to the level of being known by many people. In the other, The FNAF Universe is going strong and still in business. Since we have mentions of things that show this is modern times, we are dealing with two distinct universes. Time jumps and changes is not new to the FNAF games. From FNAF 2 being a prequel to the kid getting bit long before 1987. The question is will these two combine at some point of the future?
Theme 3: The Bigger Picture
At the end of these three books, there is a few pages of another story. After reading the first, I thought it was a preview of a story in the next book. When I got to the second book, the last few pages seemed to be the second part of the story. The story deal with police dealing with murders by Enarded. It is a very creepy story, but the question is why put this story in serial form? Is Scott and the authors pointing out that this is the most important story in these connections?
Final Thought
These books and stories are good. I highly recommended that fans of the series check them out. The stories are marketed to children, but the stories can be graphic and dark. The next book comes out in July and I will review it when it comes out. The FNAF Universe is big and complex and these stories add without taking away from the main story.