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3.59 AVERAGE
3.59 AVERAGE
I received an Advanced Readers copy of this book. I have to say that I was extremely excited to receive this and actually looked forward to reading. Once I started, it went fast for me, which I appreciated that fact. I understand that this book is based in a high school about high school students, but the language was even way too much for me. I'm not a prude by any means, but it just got to be way too much. The storyline was just OK. Would I recommend this others? I would have to say that it's not very likely.
~Thank you so much to St. Martin's Press for sending me an early copy of this book~
I'm truly at a loss for words. This book has every element that a book needs and delivers on them flawlessly. From the moment I read the first page, I was hooked. Despite what you might think based on how many books I read, I'm actually not typically able to read for long periods of time. I'm someone who consistently reads in little bits, usually an hour being the longest consecutive amount of time in a day. Only books that are truly captivating or addicting allow me to read for longer than this at once. The God Game was one of those books.
I love books about games, and I love stories about AI (for example, Illuminae, or Black Mirror), so naturally, I hoped that I would enjoy this book. What I wasn't expecting was to be so totally blown away.
Danny Tobey manages to write fleshed out characters while simultaneously driving the plot at a thrilling pace. He packs moments of despair in the spaces between the terror and desperation. I can honestly say that there wasn't one character that I didn't understand, and that is the beauty of The God Game. How could there be one version of morality when everyone experiences a situation differently?
There is so much commentary within the highly entertaining, but still horrifying, pages of this book. I don't know how Tobey managed it all.
There is legitimately so much I have to say about this book that I think I'd be unable to explain it. I don't even know how to start discussing the ending, so I think I'm just gonna say that you need to experience it for yourself (in the context of the whole book, of course).
If you're in need for books to read in 2020, I beg of you, give this one a try. You will not regret it.
Release date: January 7, 2020
I'm truly at a loss for words. This book has every element that a book needs and delivers on them flawlessly. From the moment I read the first page, I was hooked. Despite what you might think based on how many books I read, I'm actually not typically able to read for long periods of time. I'm someone who consistently reads in little bits, usually an hour being the longest consecutive amount of time in a day. Only books that are truly captivating or addicting allow me to read for longer than this at once. The God Game was one of those books.
I love books about games, and I love stories about AI (for example, Illuminae, or Black Mirror), so naturally, I hoped that I would enjoy this book. What I wasn't expecting was to be so totally blown away.
Danny Tobey manages to write fleshed out characters while simultaneously driving the plot at a thrilling pace. He packs moments of despair in the spaces between the terror and desperation. I can honestly say that there wasn't one character that I didn't understand, and that is the beauty of The God Game. How could there be one version of morality when everyone experiences a situation differently?
There is so much commentary within the highly entertaining, but still horrifying, pages of this book. I don't know how Tobey managed it all.
There is legitimately so much I have to say about this book that I think I'd be unable to explain it. I don't even know how to start discussing the ending, so I think I'm just gonna say that you need to experience it for yourself (in the context of the whole book, of course).
If you're in need for books to read in 2020, I beg of you, give this one a try. You will not regret it.
Release date: January 7, 2020
❐ Overall Rating 3½ | Narration 4¼
❐ Narrated by Andrew Eiden
❐ Listening Length: 13H 32M
❐ YA Science Fiction
❐ A diverse group of friends bonding over gaming
❐ Virtual Reality/Coding
An interesting concept that is both implausible and mad genius at the same time...I think. Which is, to say that I wasn't always sure what was going on. It was a tad too techy for me. Lot's of coding jargon that I just so glazed over while listening. Storywise, this one ticks a few boxes; interesting characters, an AI gone amock, and some thrilling aspects throughout. I probably could have liked this more but I don't think the timing was right for me. Narration was okay but could have been better with additional narrators.
❐ Narrated by Andrew Eiden
❐ Listening Length: 13H 32M
❐ YA Science Fiction
❐ A diverse group of friends bonding over gaming
❐ Virtual Reality/Coding
An interesting concept that is both implausible and mad genius at the same time...I think. Which is, to say that I wasn't always sure what was going on. It was a tad too techy for me. Lot's of coding jargon that I just so glazed over while listening. Storywise, this one ticks a few boxes; interesting characters, an AI gone amock, and some thrilling aspects throughout. I probably could have liked this more but I don't think the timing was right for me. Narration was okay but could have been better with additional narrators.
This started off so strong for me and so interesting, just such a great set-up all round. Unfortunately, as the story went on, I lost interest more and more. I really like this trope of a game becoming dangerous/deadly (although, do I? Because they never fulfill my expectations.), but the characters were not written very well, and the plot felt a little scattered.
I don't really think this is a book I will remember in a couple months because I felt no attachment to the characters, and I had problems with the way women were treated by the story, but that's what I get for finally reading a book by a presumably straight man.
Overall, the story was okay, but I honestly had to listen to the climax twice because I wasn't all that interested in how the ending played out.
I'm a little hesitant to mark this as LGBTQ because although a major character is a lesbian and a side character is gay, the gay character is forcibly outed, and the lesbian character just says she's a lesbian like once, and it's never really spoken of again.
I don't really think this is a book I will remember in a couple months because I felt no attachment to the characters, and I had problems with the way women were treated by the story, but that's what I get for finally reading a book by a presumably straight man.
Overall, the story was okay, but I honestly had to listen to the climax twice because I wasn't all that interested in how the ending played out.
Thank you to St. Martin's Press for the advance readers' copy.
A group of code savvy teens enter a dark web video game that believes that it is God. Missions accomplished means real life rewards. Failure to obey the game means real life consequences.
This book starts out a bit slow when we are being introduced to all of the characters. But, as soon as the teens start to play the game, it becomes a wild ride of a story. I really couldn't put it down.
The real world tie in to the game with the use of the high tech glasses was a great way to implement the game play. It was a smart way to keep the plot moving without having to stop to dive into the game play.
I am a fan of a group, rag tag or otherwise. This one hit the mark for me on that for sure. I like to see all the personalities and how they work for or against each other.
The game play got a bit too meta for me at some points and the hacks usually went over my head. But, it didn't stop me from enjoying the story.
What did put a damper on my enjoyment of the book was the repeated mentions of Trump. I found it kind of unnecessary, and it left a bad taste in my mouth. I don't think that it helped to tell the story in any way. It kind of felt like the author's desire to insert a very polarizing subject into his novel for that sake alone.
Overall, I really liked the book. It is unique and was fun to read. It is fast paced. Even though the book is over 400 pages, it doesn't feel long. That is always a good sign!
A group of code savvy teens enter a dark web video game that believes that it is God. Missions accomplished means real life rewards. Failure to obey the game means real life consequences.
This book starts out a bit slow when we are being introduced to all of the characters. But, as soon as the teens start to play the game, it becomes a wild ride of a story. I really couldn't put it down.
The real world tie in to the game with the use of the high tech glasses was a great way to implement the game play. It was a smart way to keep the plot moving without having to stop to dive into the game play.
I am a fan of a group, rag tag or otherwise. This one hit the mark for me on that for sure. I like to see all the personalities and how they work for or against each other.
The game play got a bit too meta for me at some points and the hacks usually went over my head. But, it didn't stop me from enjoying the story.
What did put a damper on my enjoyment of the book was the repeated mentions of Trump. I found it kind of unnecessary, and it left a bad taste in my mouth. I don't think that it helped to tell the story in any way. It kind of felt like the author's desire to insert a very polarizing subject into his novel for that sake alone.
Overall, I really liked the book. It is unique and was fun to read. It is fast paced. Even though the book is over 400 pages, it doesn't feel long. That is always a good sign!
It's like Black Mirror meets Ready Player One.
This book really did suck me in right out of the gate. I read the first 200 pages the day I picked it up, just could not put it down. This book is a lot. There's a lot of moral, philosophical, ethics questions and themes at play. As you might guess from the title, there's a bit of theology involved as well. But overall, the book is about relationships, how we relate to each other. That harsh realization all teenagers must inevitably come to, that their parents are not gods - and likewise, that parents must inevitably accept that their children are not angels, nor saviors, but rather that we are all just people: human, fallible, flawed. This book does a fantastic job of tackling these deep, heady, themes over a gripping modern day sci-fi story. Part of the character's journeys include touching on issues of race, gender, sexually, mental health, domestic violence, and socioeconomic inequality - but, these are always layered in to well rounded characters and storylines, making the world the author's created that much richer, the characters that much more knowable.
There is a certain amount of technical details, and references to various games, but it's nothing prohibitive. There's also mention of gods and religious stories, philosophical questions, but just the same it's nothing that cannot be understood well enough in context. The book is also quite long, the ARC I received from St Martin's Press just under 450 pages, but it truly is a journey, and it does follow an ensemble cast, so it never really feels like it's dragging or that parts should've been cut. The ending was satisfying, which I found especially pleasing because, well, is there anything better than an enthralling story that goes out on a high note?
I would definitely recommend this for anyone who enjoyed the early episodes of Black Mirror, anyone who generally enjoys sci-fi thrillers and/or good storytelling.
Thank you St Martin's for kindly sending me an ARC.
This book really did suck me in right out of the gate. I read the first 200 pages the day I picked it up, just could not put it down. This book is a lot. There's a lot of moral, philosophical, ethics questions and themes at play. As you might guess from the title, there's a bit of theology involved as well. But overall, the book is about relationships, how we relate to each other. That harsh realization all teenagers must inevitably come to, that their parents are not gods - and likewise, that parents must inevitably accept that their children are not angels, nor saviors, but rather that we are all just people: human, fallible, flawed. This book does a fantastic job of tackling these deep, heady, themes over a gripping modern day sci-fi story. Part of the character's journeys include touching on issues of race, gender, sexually, mental health, domestic violence, and socioeconomic inequality - but, these are always layered in to well rounded characters and storylines, making the world the author's created that much richer, the characters that much more knowable.
There is a certain amount of technical details, and references to various games, but it's nothing prohibitive. There's also mention of gods and religious stories, philosophical questions, but just the same it's nothing that cannot be understood well enough in context. The book is also quite long, the ARC I received from St Martin's Press just under 450 pages, but it truly is a journey, and it does follow an ensemble cast, so it never really feels like it's dragging or that parts should've been cut. The ending was satisfying, which I found especially pleasing because, well, is there anything better than an enthralling story that goes out on a high note?
I would definitely recommend this for anyone who enjoyed the early episodes of Black Mirror, anyone who generally enjoys sci-fi thrillers and/or good storytelling.
Thank you St Martin's for kindly sending me an ARC.
adventurous
tense
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
Charlie and his friend Peter are messing with a bot online that has supposedly been given the attributes of God. Messing with bots is a time-honored past-time, but things get weird when after insulting the bot, it goes quiet and the next day the boys receive an invitation to 'the God Game' on their phones. How did the bot know where to contact them, what is the game? Only vague, off-putting rumors exist online about the game and the invitation tells them that winning the game makes their dreams come true, but losing costs them their lives.
So, of course, they enlist three more friends, the five of them make up a computer club and have called themselves the Vindicators for reasons including the fact that they're geeky teenagers. The Vindicators quickly immerse themselves in the game, they find it advanced and quickly start getting benefits.
The game, however, starts asking them for favors and refusing comes at a high cost.
'The God Game' has a terrific pace, really good characters, and a lot of nail-biting action. There are some great twists I didn't see coming. We spend the most amount of time with Charlie, presumably because he's white, and despite his whining and lack of effort in the game, he gets rewarded, a lot, by that game. There is some internal logic of the book that could explain this (straight white males tend to get bonuses), but I don't KNOW if this was all that intentional. Add that doubt to a lame-ass ending and I'm left with mixed feelings about the book.
So, of course, they enlist three more friends, the five of them make up a computer club and have called themselves the Vindicators for reasons including the fact that they're geeky teenagers. The Vindicators quickly immerse themselves in the game, they find it advanced and quickly start getting benefits.
The game, however, starts asking them for favors and refusing comes at a high cost.
'The God Game' has a terrific pace, really good characters, and a lot of nail-biting action. There are some great twists I didn't see coming. We spend the most amount of time with Charlie, presumably because he's white, and despite his whining and lack of effort in the game, he gets rewarded, a lot, by that game. There is some internal logic of the book that could explain this (straight white males tend to get bonuses), but I don't KNOW if this was all that intentional. Add that doubt to a lame-ass ending and I'm left with mixed feelings about the book.
“Come inside and play with G.O.D. Win and all your dreams come true. Lose, you die.”
A group of high school outcasts stumble upon an online game that promises to make all of their dreams come true. The God Game is a video game run by underground hackers and controlled by an AI that believes it’s God. In the game, their realities blur with the virtual world that takes them through a series of missions that grow increasingly cruel and dangerous.
I really enjoyed this one. It was a thrilling ride that hooked me immediately and had me simultaneously rooting for the characters and frustrated with some of their choices. It lost me a bit with coding and techy talk, but it didn’t detract from the story. The commentary on religion and philosophy was really interesting.
Thank you St Martin’s Press for the gifted copy
A group of high school outcasts stumble upon an online game that promises to make all of their dreams come true. The God Game is a video game run by underground hackers and controlled by an AI that believes it’s God. In the game, their realities blur with the virtual world that takes them through a series of missions that grow increasingly cruel and dangerous.
I really enjoyed this one. It was a thrilling ride that hooked me immediately and had me simultaneously rooting for the characters and frustrated with some of their choices. It lost me a bit with coding and techy talk, but it didn’t detract from the story. The commentary on religion and philosophy was really interesting.
Thank you St Martin’s Press for the gifted copy
I ended up really really liking this book. All the characters ended up turning into these super flawed individuals that could excuse away their actions with the games but sooner or later they had to accept that those were their actions and the game was just the vessel. I really liked that aspect bc when main characters are too likeable and always the victim it's annoying. I like that alot of the conflict was their own faults. And then the God AI was like this sinister presence throughout the whole thing.