1 out of 4 stars
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Matthew and Ryan have been best friends as long as they can remember. Which, unfortunately, isn’t very long at all after they find themselves washed up on the beach of a deserted island where not all is as it appears. With only slivers of the past to cling to, the teens struggle to sew together the scraps, all while playing a very dangerous game. The boys must battle the foreign environment, replete with strange beasts, meager rations, poisonous fruit, and four mysterious keys in order to survive. An uncomfortable sensation gnaws at the back of their minds as they traverse this new reality, though, and it sure feels like someone is watching them suffer on purpose. Will the witty duo be able to beat the Island Games?
Shifting sands, boiling lava, the freezing tundra, and perfect circles pervade Island Games: Mystery of the Four Quadrants. The two plucky protagonists learn a lot about friendship and living life in the eye of the storm while learning to accept their new dystopian reality, even as they long for the comforts of home. If they manage to play all of their cards at exactly the right time, they might be able to distract the gamekeepers long enough to escape, which, when combined with an invisible wall, rains of fire, suffering in nature in pairs, and proficiency with arrows, sounds a heck of a lot like The Hunger Games.
Too many aspects of Island Games sound like echoes of Suzanne Collins’ capitol-concocted best seller for me to chalk it up to coincidence, and I was extremely disappointed, because the inspiration was thinly-veiled. If Boyer wants to make it as an author, he’s going to have to scrap some of the major elements of works that serve as his muse to avoid dissatisfied readers and irked peers. Other aspects that I felt needed serious improvement were the tone, saturated with nonchalance, word choice, and characterization. Repetition ran rampant in the text, and it distracted me from the story by disrupting the flow between every paragraph or so. On top of that, Matthew and Ryan weren’t believable to me, because they were far too positive and mature for young teenagers stranded in the wild.
For a 12-year-old breakout author, however, the book wasn’t too shabby, and I appreciated how realistic the memory loss was for the boys. As someone who’s suffered a traumatic brain injury during a freak accident, seemingly insignificant memories returning in oddly-cropped snippets with faces missing and bodies blurry is shockingly accurate, meaning that either the author has been through the same thing, or he’s done his research. The occasional outbursts from both characters were also sporadic and brought on by fatigue, which is believable as well, making the read a bit less difficult to trudge through for me. I’d place it on par with Victor Rose’s Brimstone Chronicles, which is still above the worst I’ve wrestled with.
I’m going to have to award this book a measly 1 out of 4 stars; I have faith that the author can learn, grow, and put forth so much better. Boyer shows promise, but I have to base my judgement on the text I have in front of me, and if I want to hold it to the same standard as other young adult fiction on the shelves, I can’t show leniency for the age of the author. If I could talk to Caleb J. Boyer, I would say that the poor quality of early work for all creative artists is often mismatched to a sense of style and good taste, and perseverance is key if you want to find your voice. When I was 12, my writing wasn’t too hot, either, and I’m sincerely looking forward to Boyer’s progression as a content creator, as well as the next installment of Island Games.
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Island Games
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