The God Game, by Danny Tobey ~ 5.0 Stars

Tags

Contemporary Fiction, Physical Abuse, Politics, Social Issues, Substance Abuse, Techno-Thrillers, Theology, YA Fiction

Thanks to NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press for providing an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Release Date: January 7th, 2020

496 Pages

Synopsis:

You are invited!

Come inside and play with G.O.D.

Bring your friends!

It’s fun!

But remember the rules. Win and ALL YOUR DREAMS COME TRUE. Lose, you die!

With those words, Charlie and his friends enter the G.O.D. Game, a video game run by underground hackers and controlled by a mysterious AI that believes it’s God. Through their phone screens and high-tech glasses, the teens’ realities blur with a virtual world of creeping vines, smoldering torches, runes, glyphs, gods, and mythical creatures. When they accomplish a mission the game rewards them with expensive tech, revenge on high-school tormentors, and cash flowing from ATMs. Slaying a hydra and drawing a bloody pentagram as payment to a Greek god seems fun at first. Harmless even.

But then the threatening messages start. “Worship me. Obey me.” Complete a mission, however cruel, or the game reveals their secrets and crushes their dreams. Tasks that seemed harmless at first take on deadly consequences. Mysterious packages show up at their homes. Shadowy figures start following them, appearing around corners, attacking them in parking garages. Who else is playing this game and how far will they go to win?

And what of the game’s first promise: win, win big, lose, you die. Dying in a virtual world doesn’t mean you die in real life—does it?

As Charlie and his friends try to find a way out of the game, they realize they’ve been manipulated into a bigger web they can’t escape: an AI that learned its cruelty from watching us. God is always watching, and He says when the game is done.

The God Game, first caught my eye because of many early reviews comparing it to Stranger Things and Ready Player One. I personally think it bears more a resemblance to the latter rather than the former, but comparisons don’t really matter because what this IS, is a high octane crazy thrill ride that I found impossible to put down. I’m not exaggerating. I started this after supper Sunday night and wound up staying awake until almost 3:00 a.m. I kept telling myself “just one more chapter,” but nope. That didn’t work out.

Often times with books that have so much action, character development falls by the wayside. Not here though. There are quite a few characters in this story and you get almost all of their perspectives. This makes it so much easier to become emotionally invested in them. Every single one of them have things going on in their lives that will draw on your empathy, even the bullies. There are quite a few social themes that could be triggers for some readers. These include: death of a parent, death of a sibling, physical abuse, substance abuse, and bullying. There are scenes that are very dark, but they’re not overwhelming. Instead it made me understand how a “game” like this could appeal to so many.

The plot is creative and despite previous books like Ready Player One, manages to stand completely on its own. As I said, the pacing is just NUTS, and if you get this when it comes out in January, good luck putting it down once you’ve started reading!

The God Game is an intriguing and frightening look at the proliferation of AI in our society. It also explores theology, sociology, and politics as seen through the eyes of teenagers. It has so many anxiety-inducing twists that the only thing I could be sure of is to expect the unexpected, especially at the end. There are a couple of things that aren’t fully explained, but these are so minor (plus, given the lateness of the hour, I might have just missed them), that I’m not taking any points off. With the advances in AI technology, I’m not even going to say this is science fiction. Rather, it falls under the sub-genre of techno-thriller, so if you’re a fan of that, I highly recommend this. And, although this technically falls under the heading of YA, don’t let that stop you. Some of the perspectives are told from the adults in the story, so I can see this having wide appeal for teens and adults. Now who do I talk to about making this into a movie?

Evening Wolves ~ By Luke Taylor – 4.5 Stars

Tags

Adult Fiction, Mysteries, Political Thrillers, Romance, Spy Thrillers, Techno-Thrillers

Thanks to Luke Taylor for sending me his book in exchange for an honest review.

Synopsis: Homicide detective Michael Erland passes through the gates of the opulent Fircrest Mansion to solve the murder of a woman with no fingerprints, and finds himself in the middle of a brutal struggle between Homeland Security and a domestic terrorist known as Jupiter, a hacker and criminal mastermind who steals information to sell it to the highest bidder and will stop at nothing to make the biggest transaction of his career and end the lives of those who would try to stop him. The agent who’s pursuing Jupiter, the enigmatic and stunningly beautiful Sierra Marland, conscripts Erland’s help as the only one she can trust, and as Marland and Jupiter lock wits and wills in a fiery chess game of death and consequence, Erland is forced to walk the tightrope between justice, vengeance, and love.

The man in the brown dining chair awoke from the murky depths of unconsciousness to find himself bound and gagged. Blinking sway the fog, painful shafts of light pierced his eyes. His skull echoed with the thick, dull pain of medical narcosis and felt like a blacksmith’s anvil at day’s end.

Where was he? What happened? Why was there nothing to recall but a few seconds of memory?

And with that opening, the action NEVER lets up in this first book in Luke Taylor’s Wolves and Leopards series. This has a huge cast of characters but the three major characters are Erland, Sierra, and the sinister Jupiter. I absolutely loved Sierra who’s a kickass yet vulnerable agent desperately trying to to bring down her twin sister’s murderer as well as saving the country. stymied and betrayed at every turn by traitors and bureaucrats, there’s only a handful of people she can trust, yet she never gives up. Erland is an honest and hardworking cop who gets pulled into a fight between government agencies and the terrorist organization run by Jupiter. He’s completely over his head yet he manages to not only keep up, but also to become an essential asset in stopping the terrorists. While there’s definitely some instant chemistry between them, the romance develops slowly mainly due to all the chaos around them. As they start to have feelings for one another, there are some lovely and touching scenes, which is pretty hard to do in a book such as this. Jupiter is a villain that rivals any depicted in Bond books/movies. He’s a man devoid of a conscience, only caring about power and money. Because he’s such an interesting character I wish there had been a little more of a backstory,  but with all the other characters it’s obvious why there wasn’t room. There are too many supporting characters to list, but they’re all extremely well written and fully developed. One word of warning: the author is not afraid to kill off his characters. Two of my favorites perished and it’s a credit to Luke Taylor’s talent that I got quite emotional over their deaths. But in a way, never knowing who was going to make it out alive made the reading experience even more exciting. The ending was absolutely perfect and it has me looking forward to the second book in the series Shatterpoint Alpha. 

Evening Wolves is a mammoth book clocking in at over 700 pages, and while there’s a lot of descriptive phrasing, the plot never dragged, and I found myself reluctant to put it down when real life intruded. After finishing it I wasn’t surprised that the novel was a Finalist in both the 2015 Beverly Hills Book Awards and the 2015 Readers’ Favorite Awards. The entire time I was reading I was thinking of my dreamcast if this was ever made into a movie. If you’re a fan of authors like David Baldacci, Brad Thor, Vince Flynn, and the late great Tom Clancy, and you’re looking for a new author to add to their venerated ranks, I highly recommend this.