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gabgon2597's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
Graphic: Gun violence, Murder, Medical trauma, Fire/Fire injury, Cannibalism, Body horror, Child death, Bullying, Gore, Violence, Torture, Injury/Injury detail, Death, and Blood
th3bookthief's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.75
Graphic: Drug use, Murder, Blood, Violence, Gore, Gun violence, Death, Cursing, Bullying, Injury/Injury detail, and Confinement
vyralvyris's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.5
Graphic: Murder, War, Child death, Grief, Injury/Injury detail, Kidnapping, Abandonment, Child abuse, Confinement, Torture, Body horror, Bullying, Death, Gore, Blood, Physical abuse, and Violence
Moderate: Emotional abuse, Gun violence, Drug use, and Panic attacks/disorders
Minor: Cannibalism
skillwithaquill's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.75
Graphic: Physical abuse, Torture, Blood, Gore, Injury/Injury detail, Murder, Violence, Body horror, and Death
Moderate: Kidnapping, Sexual harassment, Bullying, and Gun violence
Minor: Fatphobia, Rape, Cannibalism, Fire/Fire injury, and Excrement
Other content warnings: amputation, crowd crush, paranoia, severed limbs, decapitation, fourth-wall break, ptsd, flooding, threat of sexual violence, claustrophobia.blymanor's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
Graphic: Violence, Physical abuse, Bullying, Death, Gore, Confinement, Gun violence, Stalking, Kidnapping, Abandonment, Grief, Suicidal thoughts, Toxic friendship, Cursing, Blood, Injury/Injury detail, and Murder
Moderate: Body horror, Cannibalism, Drug use, and Alcohol
Minor: Medical content, Infidelity, Excrement, Panic attacks/disorders, Sexual violence, Pregnancy, Misogyny, Sexual assault, Sexual content, Police brutality, and Rape
yvo_about_books's review against another edition
3.75
“To think our young people are capable of what we saw chills the blood for a very long time.”
It's true that I don't tend to read a lot of proper horror titles, but I saw Fantasticland mentioned and I couldn't resist adding it to my TBR. I have a weak spot for an amusement park setting, and there was just something about this premise that sounded both terrifying and absolutely fascinating. I have to say this before I continue though: this book isn't for everyone and you definitely have to suspend your disbelief to be able to get a positive reading experience. If you are able to do that, make sure to brace yourself for a extremely twisted ride! Seriously, this basically reads like Lord Of The Flies on acid, but set in an amusement park after a hurricane hits. I wasn't expecting the non fiction vibe of this story though; Fantasticland is written in a way that makes you feel like you are reading the result of an investigation by a journalist. This journalist helps narrate the story, although the plot mainly consists in first-person accounts of people present at the park. The interviews are presented in a way that slowly reveals just how bad things got before they were finally rescued... And boy, things get properly twisted and graphic long before that final page. Torture, mutilation and even cannibalism; nothing is too much in this story. What I did find a bit lacking was the explanation of how things escalated so quickly after the hurricane hit... I was expecting something more elaborated, or at least more of an answer to that question. That said, I can't deny that this was a perfect Halloween read.
Graphic: Mental illness, Alcohol, Blood, Body horror, Confinement, Cursing, Drug use, Gore, Child death, Gun violence, Sexual assault, Injury/Injury detail, Medical trauma, Death, Stalking, Violence, Physical abuse, Rape, Cannibalism, Abandonment, Bullying, Kidnapping, Sexual violence, Toxic friendship, War, Excrement, Fire/Fire injury, Grief, Murder, and Torture
bickleyhouse's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
The employees that stayed around (many bailed before it got too bad to leave), banded together into "tribes," which ultimately began fighting one another. Things got brutal pretty quickly.
If Lord of the Flies and Nuka-World (from Fallout 4) had a love-child, it would be this novel. In fact, the whole time I was reading this, I couldn't help thinking of Nuka-World. Fallout 4 is and probably always will be my all-time favorite video game, and I bought the "Far Harbor" and "Nuka-World" DLC for the game. In that game, Nuka-World was an amusement park that was abandoned because of "the bomb" that hit and wiped everything out. Many buildings and rides were still standing. But the park had been taken over by raiders; there were at least three different tribes of raiders and they all hated each other, so there was plenty of fighting. There was also one area of the park that had been taken over by a horrible hybrid of crocodile and T-Rex. There were no raiders in that part.
But I shan't continue raving about Fallout, because this is a book review. The book is presented in the form of a number of interviews by fictional news reporter Adam Jakes. He interviews many different people, from management to survivors to someone from the Florida National Guard who finally came in to rescue the survivors. At the end, he interviews the son of the man who came up with the FantasticLand idea, in the first place.
This book is not for the faint of heart. It's bloody, it's violent, it involves bullying, terror, bombing, arrows, guns, and many other things. There are allegations of rape, but we never hear of any that actually happened, only gossip about it.
Ultimately, I did really enjoy the book. It was slow starting, but each interview carries the story a little bit further, and once it got to interviews of people who were actually there during all of the fighting and dying, it picked up the pace and got more interesting.
Are our children (most of the employees who went through all of this were college age or younger) really capable of things like this? Many of us read Lord of the Flies in high school. Those were younger children than these. Fear, abandonment, and hopelessness does strange things to people, and that seems to be what all of the FantasticLand employees went through. Because it seemed as though they would never be rescued. The final fight scene is pretty mind-numbing. As is the interview with the leader of the toughest tribe in the park, the Pirates, Brock Hockney. A psychopath if there ever was one.
There were a couple of interesting quotes that I got from the book. In one of the interviews, Clara Ann Clark, the leader of the ShopGirls, says she hates people. She doesn't mean individual people. She means people when they get in groups. She says that "a person gets stupid when they become people." I find that I kind of agree with her.
Then there was a shoutout to Tom Petty, at one point, when one of the interviews said, "Then we waited. A wise man once said it's the hardest part."
Fiction, but is it as far-fetched as it seems? Hopefully we never find out.
Graphic: Bullying, Violence, and Blood
achay91's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.75
Graphic: Torture, Death, Bullying, Gore, Cursing, Murder, Blood, and Grief
Moderate: Sexual content
Minor: Rape, Gun violence, and Alcohol
that_cow_girl's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
5.0
Graphic: Death, Gore, Physical abuse, Confinement, Emotional abuse, Gun violence, Injury/Injury detail, Kidnapping, Murder, War, Violence, Cursing, Child death, Suicidal thoughts, Blood, Child abuse, and Bullying
Moderate: Misogyny, Fire/Fire injury, Kidnapping, Alcohol, and Cannibalism
sharkysheets's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
Graphic: Child death, Injury/Injury detail, Medical content, Sexual harassment, Gore, Grief, Gun violence, Torture, Death, Fire/Fire injury, Blood, Bullying, Cursing, Emotional abuse, Mental illness, Murder, Physical abuse, and Violence