Take a photo of a barcode or cover
3.59 AVERAGE
3.59 AVERAGE
The God Game was a creative, excellent, and captivating novel! It was a bit long, however the pace never slowed and the story was addicting. This entertaining thriller has some Black Mirror vibes (which is a show I absolutely love and highly recommend) and it was interesting to see the consequences of each action or choice. I wasn’t sure how the story would end but I actually loved the ending! This is definitely one of those novels that you have to suspend belief for since there’s some aspects that aren’t particularly realistic or believable. In the end, this won’t be one of my favorite novels, but I thought it was well-written, kept my attention, and was difficult to put down since I wanted to know what happened next. Thank you to Net Galley and St Martins Press for the free advanced copy in exchange for an honest review!
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!
You! Yes, you. You over there who isn't usually into sci-fi/fantasy, who may not like books about tech. READ THIS BOOK. Get ready for an absolutely addicting, electric thriller that you will devour as quickly as you pick it up.
Enter a high school in Austin and five misfit techy kids of varying sorts who call themselves The Vindicators. Two of them, Peter and Charlie, discover an underground augmented reality game called The God Game. Attracted by the enticing premise you see above, they convince the rest of the group to join in on the fun, thinking it'll be a fun and unique video game. Simple enough. They hold their phones in front of their faces and see an intricate, medieval-type gamespace imposed on their reality: torches illuminating secret passageways, little gremlins and elves giving them hints, lots of ancient wisdom from every religious tradition. You can do good things (or things that the Game tells you to do, like delivering mysterious packages) and earn Goldz to redeem for amazing mods or real-life gifts. If you do something that the Game deems bad, you are marked down with Blaxx.
The Vindicators have fun with it - and they believe it's just a game.
But soon enough, the Vindicators start to realize that the Game is much more powerful than they think. It's omniscient and omnipotent, just like God...or, it is God. With one simple choice in gamespace, the players can destroy people in real life. With a few thousand Goldz, they can Make All Their Dreams Come True™ and receive gifts beyond their wildest dreams: college admissions, wealth, success, intelligence, test answers. Oh, and one more thing. You can only quit the Game in one way, and dying in the Game means dying in real life.
Tobey not only devises a fantastic, inventive concept, but executes it to perfection, like a long and especially twisted episode of Black Mirror. You get to know each of the five Vindicators so well, their secrets, their weaknesses, their shameful desires. The Game takes you along for a ride, funny and cruel and adrenaline-pumping, giving you a sick pleasure in the decisions it forces the characters to make and making you grateful you're not playing. I'm impressed at what a complicated mindgame Tobey spins out, keeping the thrill and tension throughout. He integrates coding paradoxes, religious philosophy, complex family relationships, and more with ease; although the book is 400+ pages, it zips by.
Suffice it to say I've never read a book like this, and I'll find something this crazy and well-done again. I'm not typically a reader of this genre, but this book is addicting and fast-paced like nothing I've seen before. I can't recommend it enough - do yourself a favor and pick up this book! Thank you to St. Martin's Press for the ARC via Netgalley.
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!
You! Yes, you. You over there who isn't usually into sci-fi/fantasy, who may not like books about tech. READ THIS BOOK. Get ready for an absolutely addicting, electric thriller that you will devour as quickly as you pick it up.
Enter a high school in Austin and five misfit techy kids of varying sorts who call themselves The Vindicators. Two of them, Peter and Charlie, discover an underground augmented reality game called The God Game. Attracted by the enticing premise you see above, they convince the rest of the group to join in on the fun, thinking it'll be a fun and unique video game. Simple enough. They hold their phones in front of their faces and see an intricate, medieval-type gamespace imposed on their reality: torches illuminating secret passageways, little gremlins and elves giving them hints, lots of ancient wisdom from every religious tradition. You can do good things (or things that the Game tells you to do, like delivering mysterious packages) and earn Goldz to redeem for amazing mods or real-life gifts. If you do something that the Game deems bad, you are marked down with Blaxx.
The Vindicators have fun with it - and they believe it's just a game.
But soon enough, the Vindicators start to realize that the Game is much more powerful than they think. It's omniscient and omnipotent, just like God...or, it is God. With one simple choice in gamespace, the players can destroy people in real life. With a few thousand Goldz, they can Make All Their Dreams Come True™ and receive gifts beyond their wildest dreams: college admissions, wealth, success, intelligence, test answers. Oh, and one more thing. You can only quit the Game in one way, and dying in the Game means dying in real life.
Tobey not only devises a fantastic, inventive concept, but executes it to perfection, like a long and especially twisted episode of Black Mirror. You get to know each of the five Vindicators so well, their secrets, their weaknesses, their shameful desires. The Game takes you along for a ride, funny and cruel and adrenaline-pumping, giving you a sick pleasure in the decisions it forces the characters to make and making you grateful you're not playing. I'm impressed at what a complicated mindgame Tobey spins out, keeping the thrill and tension throughout. He integrates coding paradoxes, religious philosophy, complex family relationships, and more with ease; although the book is 400+ pages, it zips by.
Suffice it to say I've never read a book like this, and I'll find something this crazy and well-done again. I'm not typically a reader of this genre, but this book is addicting and fast-paced like nothing I've seen before. I can't recommend it enough - do yourself a favor and pick up this book! Thank you to St. Martin's Press for the ARC via Netgalley.
My brain can't currently handle anything where thinking is involved when it comes to pleasure reading. Since I read all day for my thesis I picked this up, hoping it would be a fast and fun read.
It was. This is a plot driven book and it starts out with a bang as soon as you start reading. Things keep happening all the time, there are twists and turns throughout the book. And it's easy to read and spend some hours with. So it was a perfect read for my brain space.
That being said, it isn't a great bok. I enjoyed it because it was fast and hard to put down. But I also had to suspend disbelief so much. I am, very good at that though. I understand that this is meant at entertainment and therefore read it as such, not picking apart plot points that don't make sense or I didn't quite understand why they where even part of the book.
So let's say this: read this if you want something plot heavy that will keep you turning the pages. If you like games or VR. If instead of watching a movie, you want to read a book.
Expect to be kept on your toes.
If you're looking for great language, a well thought of plot or characters and a book that will stay with you; consider picking up something else. I had fun reading this but it's been two days since I finished it and I'm already forgetting it.
It was. This is a plot driven book and it starts out with a bang as soon as you start reading. Things keep happening all the time, there are twists and turns throughout the book. And it's easy to read and spend some hours with. So it was a perfect read for my brain space.
That being said, it isn't a great bok. I enjoyed it because it was fast and hard to put down. But I also had to suspend disbelief so much. I am, very good at that though. I understand that this is meant at entertainment and therefore read it as such, not picking apart plot points that don't make sense or I didn't quite understand why they where even part of the book.
So let's say this: read this if you want something plot heavy that will keep you turning the pages. If you like games or VR. If instead of watching a movie, you want to read a book.
Expect to be kept on your toes.
If you're looking for great language, a well thought of plot or characters and a book that will stay with you; consider picking up something else. I had fun reading this but it's been two days since I finished it and I'm already forgetting it.
Welcome to The God Game! This book, and the game within it, feel like something straight out of a Black Mirror episode–“Shut Up and Dance” (the one with the blackmail text messages) especially comes to mind. Prepare yourself for moral dilemmas, the horrors of technology, the complexities of teenage friendship and high school life, and above all, a riveting plot that makes this book’s 450+ pages absolutely fly past. Just remember, even as you read this review: G.O.D. is always watching.
Quick plot rundown: Five high school seniors, who refer to themselves as the Vindicators, spend their time coding and executing the occasional practical joke. When one of the group members, Peter, introduces the others to a game known as “The God Game,” run by an AI that was trained on all the world’s religious texts and literally believes itself to be God (or G.O.D., as it calls itself), the teens quickly find their lives consumed by the game’s endless quests, tests, and blackmail. Following G.O.D.’s directions earns you Goldz, which lead to real-world rewards of cash and favors, while disobedience earns you Blaxx, which bring real-life consequences ranging from embarrassment to physical violence to actual death. What starts as just some innocent pranks (changing a street sign to read “DONALD TRUMP IS A SHAPE-SHIFTING LIZARD,” for example) quickly morphs into lying, cheating, vandalism, and worse. As the game takes over the Vindicators’ lives, blurring the lines of reality through the use of AR glasses, they soon realize that playing the game is a risky endeavor…but getting out might prove fatal.
There were three elements of The God Game that really made it work for me: the eerily prescient premise, the character development, and the breakneck pace and turns.
The idea of a quasi-sentient AI is nothing new; such stories date back decades. What makes this one different is how immediate, how very now it is. Though the story is set in 2015, the technologies it contains are all based on ones we already have in our world: glasses that encourage augmented reality, security cameras in every corner of schools, smart car systems, artificial intelligence that learns from interaction and can communicate in a way similar to a human being, and so on. The author of the book is actually an expert in AI who regularly writes articles on it and speaks about it at conferences, and his expertise and strong handle on the topic is clear in every chapter. From the omnipresence and hackability of technology to the ethical complications inherent in the world of AI–not to mention the concerns that grow even greater when religion is thrown into the mix–Tobey depicts a comprehensive picture of the horrifying reach and potential of smart technologies left unchecked. Although some of the principles seemed grossly oversimplified–especially G.O.D.’s ability to create and manipulate images, despite the fact that even simple image recognition is still a very weak area in AI–the overall effect of just slightly enhancing what we already know was still chilling and highly effective.
This intriguing and relevant premise was further brought to life by the complex, well-developed cast of characters. All five of the Vindicators are fleshed out, with their own goals, insecurities, and complicated histories, and their relationships with each other are constantly in flux in a way that is consistent with typical high school student behavior. At the heart of the story is Charlie, once a golden boy with dreams of going to Harvard, whose academics and social life have plummeted following his mother’s death a year ago. Peter, reckless and always out to push boundaries, uses manipulation and false bravado to compensate for his own messy past. Kenny, a philosophical-minded boy, struggles to keep to his fiercely-held principles even as G.O.D. demands that he compromise them. Vanhi, the only girl in the Vindicators, shares Charlie’s Harvard dream, but she knows that a single blemish from her past could wreck everything. And Alex, bullied by his peers for being the “dumb Asian,” struggles to stay afloat amid a tumultuous home life and deep personal insecurity. Alternating between loyalty and betrayal, they tread the treacherous waters of college applications, popularity, and of course, the sacrifices G.O.D. demands of them, with lively banter, deeply-felt emotions, and the signature mistrust of anyone and everyone that so many high schoolers hold.
Another point worthy of note is the sheer diversity of the characters, both primary and secondary. Three of the Vindicators are non-white, and Alex’s parents are immigrants. Vanhi is a lesbian and her little brother has a developmental disability. A major secondary character is also queer. None of these identities feel like tokenism; all are organic parts of the characters’ identities, brought up when relevant but otherwise not aggressively shoehorned in.
My only quibble with the characters in general was the fact that all of the adults were pretty awful. Several of them were cheating on their spouses, some were abusive and/or manipulative of their children, and even the ones who weren’t awful still put an absurd amount of pressure on their kids. I’m all for parents who aren’t perfect, but it rang a little false that all of them were so terrible.
Finally, what held this whole book together was its plot and pacing. It never dragged, always moving along at a fast clip, but never getting so fast that it was confusing (save for one moment where the Vindicators suddenly all come up with a complex-yet-brilliant idea in the span of about two pages). Truth be told, it was hard to put down–just as each fresh horror was resolved, a new one would crop up, demanding that you keep going to ensure that everything turns out okay. This is a thriller in every sense of the term, with everything from physical fights to car chases to psychological terror to life-or-death scenarios; the result is a dark and compelling page-turner with no time wasted.
Oh, and one more thing: there are twists galore, as one would expect, but the biggest doozy is the final chapter. I won’t say any more on that front, but that final “gotcha!” moment was a perfect unnerving conclusion to an unnerving tale.
The God Game is a tricky rabbit-hole of a book that sucks you in with seemingly innocent characters but quickly morphs into something bigger, scarier, and higher-stakes than you imagined. The questions it raises will linger long after you turn the final page–as will, I expect, a general unease around computers and a desperate need to keep your webcam covered at all times. But don’t worry. G.O.D. isn’t angry with you…probably, anyway.
TRIGGER/CONTENT WARNING: physical child abuse, abusive romantic relationship, suicide attempt, detailed depiction of depression, attempted mass attack of school, outing of a closeted gay character, illegal drug use
Thank you to St. Martin’s Press for providing me with an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review!
Quick plot rundown: Five high school seniors, who refer to themselves as the Vindicators, spend their time coding and executing the occasional practical joke. When one of the group members, Peter, introduces the others to a game known as “The God Game,” run by an AI that was trained on all the world’s religious texts and literally believes itself to be God (or G.O.D., as it calls itself), the teens quickly find their lives consumed by the game’s endless quests, tests, and blackmail. Following G.O.D.’s directions earns you Goldz, which lead to real-world rewards of cash and favors, while disobedience earns you Blaxx, which bring real-life consequences ranging from embarrassment to physical violence to actual death. What starts as just some innocent pranks (changing a street sign to read “DONALD TRUMP IS A SHAPE-SHIFTING LIZARD,” for example) quickly morphs into lying, cheating, vandalism, and worse. As the game takes over the Vindicators’ lives, blurring the lines of reality through the use of AR glasses, they soon realize that playing the game is a risky endeavor…but getting out might prove fatal.
There were three elements of The God Game that really made it work for me: the eerily prescient premise, the character development, and the breakneck pace and turns.
The idea of a quasi-sentient AI is nothing new; such stories date back decades. What makes this one different is how immediate, how very now it is. Though the story is set in 2015, the technologies it contains are all based on ones we already have in our world: glasses that encourage augmented reality, security cameras in every corner of schools, smart car systems, artificial intelligence that learns from interaction and can communicate in a way similar to a human being, and so on. The author of the book is actually an expert in AI who regularly writes articles on it and speaks about it at conferences, and his expertise and strong handle on the topic is clear in every chapter. From the omnipresence and hackability of technology to the ethical complications inherent in the world of AI–not to mention the concerns that grow even greater when religion is thrown into the mix–Tobey depicts a comprehensive picture of the horrifying reach and potential of smart technologies left unchecked. Although some of the principles seemed grossly oversimplified–especially G.O.D.’s ability to create and manipulate images, despite the fact that even simple image recognition is still a very weak area in AI–the overall effect of just slightly enhancing what we already know was still chilling and highly effective.
This intriguing and relevant premise was further brought to life by the complex, well-developed cast of characters. All five of the Vindicators are fleshed out, with their own goals, insecurities, and complicated histories, and their relationships with each other are constantly in flux in a way that is consistent with typical high school student behavior. At the heart of the story is Charlie, once a golden boy with dreams of going to Harvard, whose academics and social life have plummeted following his mother’s death a year ago. Peter, reckless and always out to push boundaries, uses manipulation and false bravado to compensate for his own messy past. Kenny, a philosophical-minded boy, struggles to keep to his fiercely-held principles even as G.O.D. demands that he compromise them. Vanhi, the only girl in the Vindicators, shares Charlie’s Harvard dream, but she knows that a single blemish from her past could wreck everything. And Alex, bullied by his peers for being the “dumb Asian,” struggles to stay afloat amid a tumultuous home life and deep personal insecurity. Alternating between loyalty and betrayal, they tread the treacherous waters of college applications, popularity, and of course, the sacrifices G.O.D. demands of them, with lively banter, deeply-felt emotions, and the signature mistrust of anyone and everyone that so many high schoolers hold.
Another point worthy of note is the sheer diversity of the characters, both primary and secondary. Three of the Vindicators are non-white, and Alex’s parents are immigrants. Vanhi is a lesbian and her little brother has a developmental disability. A major secondary character is also queer. None of these identities feel like tokenism; all are organic parts of the characters’ identities, brought up when relevant but otherwise not aggressively shoehorned in.
My only quibble with the characters in general was the fact that all of the adults were pretty awful. Several of them were cheating on their spouses, some were abusive and/or manipulative of their children, and even the ones who weren’t awful still put an absurd amount of pressure on their kids. I’m all for parents who aren’t perfect, but it rang a little false that all of them were so terrible.
Finally, what held this whole book together was its plot and pacing. It never dragged, always moving along at a fast clip, but never getting so fast that it was confusing (save for one moment where the Vindicators suddenly all come up with a complex-yet-brilliant idea in the span of about two pages). Truth be told, it was hard to put down–just as each fresh horror was resolved, a new one would crop up, demanding that you keep going to ensure that everything turns out okay. This is a thriller in every sense of the term, with everything from physical fights to car chases to psychological terror to life-or-death scenarios; the result is a dark and compelling page-turner with no time wasted.
Oh, and one more thing: there are twists galore, as one would expect, but the biggest doozy is the final chapter. I won’t say any more on that front, but that final “gotcha!” moment was a perfect unnerving conclusion to an unnerving tale.
The God Game is a tricky rabbit-hole of a book that sucks you in with seemingly innocent characters but quickly morphs into something bigger, scarier, and higher-stakes than you imagined. The questions it raises will linger long after you turn the final page–as will, I expect, a general unease around computers and a desperate need to keep your webcam covered at all times. But don’t worry. G.O.D. isn’t angry with you…probably, anyway.
TRIGGER/CONTENT WARNING: physical child abuse, abusive romantic relationship, suicide attempt, detailed depiction of depression, attempted mass attack of school, outing of a closeted gay character, illegal drug use
Thank you to St. Martin’s Press for providing me with an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review!
This is definitely not a book I would have normally chosen. This seems like a story told so many times, kids being caught up in online gaming and pulled into a game of life or death. Surprisingly I was hooked from the beginning and couldn’t put it down. Those that are fans of online gaming, and movies such as Ready Player One will definitely enjoy this book.
What if you played a game that mixed reality with real life? What if the choices you made in the game affected real life? The God Game tells the story of a group of outcasts at a local high school. I liked the AR aspect of the story but that was about it. The story is full of terrible characters with little moral judgment. Everyone was so easily corrupted it got ridiculous at times. I cannot recommend a book where its full of terrible people. If you want to read a sci-fi thriller, checkout [b:Recursion by Blake Crouch|42046112|Recursion|Blake Crouch|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1543687940l/42046112._SY75_.jpg|64277987]
Rating: 2.5 / 5
Rating: 2.5 / 5
It's been months since I last read this after getting around halfway through the audio, so it's time to declare it a DNF
You can read my full review on my blog, The Writerly Way, here.
Many thanks to Edelweiss and St. Martin's Press for an eARC in exchange for an honest, unbiased opinion.
This book was my first read of 2020, and way to start the year off right. It was perfect for my geeky, nerdy, AI-loving, video-game-playing self. I always forget how much I love rogue AI and virtual reality stories until I read them, and this had both, so win-win.
The God Game is a virtual reality game overlaid onto the real world, where the stakes are high, the AI is more than a little bit rogue, and nothing is quite as it seems.
This book isn’t going to be right for everyone, but it hit that sweet spot for me, between video games, philosophy, sarcasm, and danger. It’s Sword Art Online with multiple points of view and overlaid onto the real world instead of fully immersive virtual reality. But hey, an off-the-rails AI is still an off-the-rails AI, right?!
It’s been a long time since I traded sleep for a book, because sleep is my favorite activity. Okay, maybe second favorite, right after eating bacon. But when I hit about 75% on this book at 11:30 at night, I knew I was in trouble, and I stayed up and finished it before going to bed, darn it. Was I exhausted the next day? Yes. So worth it, though.
My Thoughts:
- Hint: humans suck. Humans have always sucked. Rogue AIs are clearly where it’s at. The entire premise behind The God Game is an AI that thinks it’s God, both manipulating and trying to understand humanity. I loved this AI, which although it has no official name other than “God,” is clearly my favorite character in this. What can I say? I have a soft spot for potentially homicidal AIs. The G.O.D. game is a virtual reality game overlaid on top of the real world, viewed through a phone, and it offers rewards that are as enticing as the potential consequences are deadly. Basically, win big or never go home. Which are some stakes right there. The AI basically embodies the idea of chaotic neutral, so I never knew what to expect from it or how to feel about it, and I was often pleasantly surprised by events as they unfolded.
- The book raises so many moral and philosophical questions, and I found it delightful. Also slightly terrifying and potentially existential crisis inducing. Sort of what you’d expect from a book based on an AI that thinks it’s God. I’m a huge fan of books that make you think. Not in the leading you to the river and forcing your head in to make you drink sort of way, but in a more subtle way—by answering none of the questions and forcing you to fill in the gaps yourself.
- The heroes of this are nerds and geeks, and if that’s not a perfect cast, I don’t know what is. Let’s be clear, though: these kids are no heroes. They’re teenagers who are lost and confused, barely staying afloat with what’s going on in their own lives, so wrapped up in their own worlds and unable to save themselves that they rarely give a thought to those around them and what they might be going through. And you know what? Who the frig isn’t? I was that much more invested in their story simply because they were so real and normal, facing extraordinary things.
- The friends in this book all have their own stuff going on, their own arcs, and all are tested in different ways, and there was always the question of whether their friendship was enough. The best thing about the God Game was how it not only made them question themselves, but their connections with other people. Which always has the potential to be both a good thing and a bad thing. This is a dynamic I love in books and shows, when friendship is tested and a character (or characters) have to find out just how far they’d go for someone else. It’s one of my favorite tropes, and it was no exception here.
- There’s moments that are every bit as creepy and dark as you would hope, and I got goosebumps! The beginning starts off a little slow (as they do), but Tobey drops just enough foreshadowing to know something’s about to go awry. The hints were fairly in-your-face, but just sinister enough to entice me to keep going until something started happening, and they quickly gained momentum until, phew, things got dark quickly.
- There are absolutely no black and whites. Don’t try to find them. It’ll hurt your head. This whole book exists in shades of gray, as it should. People are neither good nor bad. They’re just complicated. As is the game. And everyone has secrets. Secrets galore! If gray characters are your thing, there’s a whole cast here for you to love. Everyone has something to hide, and little by little, this book airs all their dirty laundry. Just when you think you know a character … think again! A new revelation about them smacks you right in the face. I loved the constant guessing and the pure, agonizing realism of it. Because we all have secrets, don’t we? The real question is, how far would we go to keep them?
Sticking Points:
- The teen angst is strong with this one. I mean, to be fair, it is a YA coming of age focusing on teen issues, so it neatly falls into the niche it’s supposed to be in. This is purely a me issue. Reliving teen angst to such a high degree isn’t necessarily on my to-do list (and mostly, it makes me want to shake some sense into these kids). On the other hand, to play Devil’s advocate to … my own Devil … because I’m talented like that, the struggles all the teens in this book face are so freaking relatable. Which, come to think of it, is probably why I struggled a bit with the depth of it. Everyone has such dark, emotional issues and it was just a lot, coupled with the resonance it stirred from my own teen years. All I’m saying is be prepared for it going in, because this book will dredge up some stuff if you let it!
Many thanks to Edelweiss and St. Martin's Press for an eARC in exchange for an honest, unbiased opinion.
This book was my first read of 2020, and way to start the year off right. It was perfect for my geeky, nerdy, AI-loving, video-game-playing self. I always forget how much I love rogue AI and virtual reality stories until I read them, and this had both, so win-win.
The God Game is a virtual reality game overlaid onto the real world, where the stakes are high, the AI is more than a little bit rogue, and nothing is quite as it seems.
This book isn’t going to be right for everyone, but it hit that sweet spot for me, between video games, philosophy, sarcasm, and danger. It’s Sword Art Online with multiple points of view and overlaid onto the real world instead of fully immersive virtual reality. But hey, an off-the-rails AI is still an off-the-rails AI, right?!
It’s been a long time since I traded sleep for a book, because sleep is my favorite activity. Okay, maybe second favorite, right after eating bacon. But when I hit about 75% on this book at 11:30 at night, I knew I was in trouble, and I stayed up and finished it before going to bed, darn it. Was I exhausted the next day? Yes. So worth it, though.
My Thoughts:
- Hint: humans suck. Humans have always sucked. Rogue AIs are clearly where it’s at. The entire premise behind The God Game is an AI that thinks it’s God, both manipulating and trying to understand humanity. I loved this AI, which although it has no official name other than “God,” is clearly my favorite character in this. What can I say? I have a soft spot for potentially homicidal AIs. The G.O.D. game is a virtual reality game overlaid on top of the real world, viewed through a phone, and it offers rewards that are as enticing as the potential consequences are deadly. Basically, win big or never go home. Which are some stakes right there. The AI basically embodies the idea of chaotic neutral, so I never knew what to expect from it or how to feel about it, and I was often pleasantly surprised by events as they unfolded.
- The book raises so many moral and philosophical questions, and I found it delightful. Also slightly terrifying and potentially existential crisis inducing. Sort of what you’d expect from a book based on an AI that thinks it’s God. I’m a huge fan of books that make you think. Not in the leading you to the river and forcing your head in to make you drink sort of way, but in a more subtle way—by answering none of the questions and forcing you to fill in the gaps yourself.
- The heroes of this are nerds and geeks, and if that’s not a perfect cast, I don’t know what is. Let’s be clear, though: these kids are no heroes. They’re teenagers who are lost and confused, barely staying afloat with what’s going on in their own lives, so wrapped up in their own worlds and unable to save themselves that they rarely give a thought to those around them and what they might be going through. And you know what? Who the frig isn’t? I was that much more invested in their story simply because they were so real and normal, facing extraordinary things.
- The friends in this book all have their own stuff going on, their own arcs, and all are tested in different ways, and there was always the question of whether their friendship was enough. The best thing about the God Game was how it not only made them question themselves, but their connections with other people. Which always has the potential to be both a good thing and a bad thing. This is a dynamic I love in books and shows, when friendship is tested and a character (or characters) have to find out just how far they’d go for someone else. It’s one of my favorite tropes, and it was no exception here.
- There’s moments that are every bit as creepy and dark as you would hope, and I got goosebumps! The beginning starts off a little slow (as they do), but Tobey drops just enough foreshadowing to know something’s about to go awry. The hints were fairly in-your-face, but just sinister enough to entice me to keep going until something started happening, and they quickly gained momentum until, phew, things got dark quickly.
- There are absolutely no black and whites. Don’t try to find them. It’ll hurt your head. This whole book exists in shades of gray, as it should. People are neither good nor bad. They’re just complicated. As is the game. And everyone has secrets. Secrets galore! If gray characters are your thing, there’s a whole cast here for you to love. Everyone has something to hide, and little by little, this book airs all their dirty laundry. Just when you think you know a character … think again! A new revelation about them smacks you right in the face. I loved the constant guessing and the pure, agonizing realism of it. Because we all have secrets, don’t we? The real question is, how far would we go to keep them?
Sticking Points:
- The teen angst is strong with this one. I mean, to be fair, it is a YA coming of age focusing on teen issues, so it neatly falls into the niche it’s supposed to be in. This is purely a me issue. Reliving teen angst to such a high degree isn’t necessarily on my to-do list (and mostly, it makes me want to shake some sense into these kids). On the other hand, to play Devil’s advocate to … my own Devil … because I’m talented like that, the struggles all the teens in this book face are so freaking relatable. Which, come to think of it, is probably why I struggled a bit with the depth of it. Everyone has such dark, emotional issues and it was just a lot, coupled with the resonance it stirred from my own teen years. All I’m saying is be prepared for it going in, because this book will dredge up some stuff if you let it!
I received an ARC from the publisher of this title for an honest review.
Charlie and his group of friends hang out in the neglected computer/robotics lab in the basement of their school. But one day they get an invitation to play The G.O.D Game. Soon the real world and the virtual world have aligned and no one's sure what's real and what's fiction.
Set just before the last presidential election, The GOD Game brings up a lot of concerns that are very current. This creepy, edgy thriller will have you turning pages long in to the night!
Charlie and his group of friends hang out in the neglected computer/robotics lab in the basement of their school. But one day they get an invitation to play The G.O.D Game. Soon the real world and the virtual world have aligned and no one's sure what's real and what's fiction.
Set just before the last presidential election, The GOD Game brings up a lot of concerns that are very current. This creepy, edgy thriller will have you turning pages long in to the night!