3 out of 4 stars
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Imagine waking up one day and instead of finding yourself in bed, you are on a long strip of deserted beach on a large island. Behind you is the jungle and then a volcano, in front of you is the ocean and a boat. Beside you is nothing but your best friend. You have no idea how you got here and no real memory of your life before right now. You have no food, no water and no way off the island except for the hope that boat is operational. In Island Games: Mystery of the Four Quadrants by Caleb J. Boyer, this is the exact situation in which the main characters find themselves.
This book is perfect for the age category of preteens (aged 9-13) and I would say that probably boys would enjoy this more than girls. The language used is very simplistic which makes the story easy to read and follow along with instead of struggling every sentence to figure out what a word means. The plot and pace of the book reminds me of other novels such as The Hunger Games or The Maze Runner, so fans of those books will enjoy this one.
My rating for this book though is 3 out of 4 stars. To me, the dialogue at some parts has a feel of being forced or very unnatural. An example of this is when the boys are in the jungle and there is a large creature hovering over one of them as he sleeps. Instead of being frozen in fear or fighting or just screaming, the other yells out "Ah! Dude! There's a beast breathing on your face!" Another example of where things seem forced is in the boy’s knowledge of what they must do and what will happen. Near the beginning, they talk about how things are their only chance at survival and they investigate the plants for edible options. But to me, for two young teenage boys who have no memories, how would they know this stuff? And two untrained swimmers manage to last “many hours in the ocean” swimming against the current. Details like these are why I didn’t give a perfect 4 star rating.
However, the book did have many good qualities about it. The adventures the boys faced were never unbelievable that they could have survived them. I also enjoyed that it never took any kind of magic or other supernatural interference for the boys to survive. They managed to use their friendship and work together to make it past their challenges, which is something not seen very often in books. I also liked the connection between how some stages of their challenges seem more like a video game than real life, considering their only shared memory at first is playing games. I was actually expecting the ending to reveal the whole time they had just been characters being controlled in a video game, so the end was a decent surprise for me and left me wanting know more about the boys and their next adventure.
Overall, the experience of reading this book was a good one. I tried to keep the age of the author out of my feelings for the book and found I was pleasantly surprised again. I expected to be able to say that this book was good considering its author was just twelve. But this book was interesting and well written enough that I would have felt the same even with an adult author. So instead I can just say this book is good.
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Island Games
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