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A review by imfullybooked
The God Game by Danny Tobey
3.0
Thank you to NetGalley for providing and eARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.
I have many conflicting emotions regarding this book. There were things that worked for me and I enjoyed, and things that made me cringe and shrug my shoulders.
Let's start with the premise. A group of tech savvy teens come across a game, The God Game, where the AI operating it pretends to be god, and it tells them it can make their dreams come true. But, cause there's always a but, if they do things wrong, they will be punished. And to die in the game means to die in real life. I was sold on that straight away. It sounded thrilling, if a bit crazy, and I wanted to know what happens.
I wasn't entirely satisfied with what followed that premise. Though the book was engaging and fast paced for the most of it, the plot itself felt disjointed, partially because of constant switches in perspective. The way the eARC was formatted didn't help with distinguishing where one POV ended and other started. Overall I found the story enjoyable, but somehow unbelievable (don't confuse it with me saying it's unrealistic - of course it's unrealistic, it's sci-fi after all).
The characters really didn't work for me. I couldn't sympathise with any of them, I had no feelings about any of them, if not a mild dislike for most. I think they're the weakest point of the book. I wanted them more fleshed out, I wanted more character development. All of them stay pretty much the same, throughout the whole book. Kenny and Vahni, the most diverse of the characters got very little "screen time" compared to the other 3 characters, especially coming towards the end of the book. I usually have no problems relating to at least one character, or rooting for them, but in this case, I had no one. They're a group of friends who essentially treat each other like family, yet shit on each other and try and ruin their future to save their own asses. I mean, if there was some commentary there about human selfishness, I missed it and I guess that's entirely on me.
There was a case of insta love in there, too which kinda brought the book down for me.
Lastly, the book could do with more editing. The dialogue was so clunky at times, and honestly that's an easy fix. Some sentences were atrocious, which again is just the case of editing, as the whole book was written quite well. There's one particular sentence I have in mind which is the length of a sizeable paragraph and I'm baffled how it ended up in the ARC.
People draw a lot of comparisons between this book and Ready Player One, and honestly this one is much better (RPO is garbage - nothing can change my mind about it), so I guess what I'm trying to say is... although I had issues with some things, I enjoyed others, and I would classify this book as a fun, thrilling and quite spooky read and I would recommend it to any VR, video game, sci-fi fans, especially fans of RPO.
I have many conflicting emotions regarding this book. There were things that worked for me and I enjoyed, and things that made me cringe and shrug my shoulders.
Let's start with the premise. A group of tech savvy teens come across a game, The God Game, where the AI operating it pretends to be god, and it tells them it can make their dreams come true. But, cause there's always a but, if they do things wrong, they will be punished. And to die in the game means to die in real life. I was sold on that straight away. It sounded thrilling, if a bit crazy, and I wanted to know what happens.
I wasn't entirely satisfied with what followed that premise. Though the book was engaging and fast paced for the most of it, the plot itself felt disjointed, partially because of constant switches in perspective. The way the eARC was formatted didn't help with distinguishing where one POV ended and other started. Overall I found the story enjoyable, but somehow unbelievable (don't confuse it with me saying it's unrealistic - of course it's unrealistic, it's sci-fi after all).
The characters really didn't work for me. I couldn't sympathise with any of them, I had no feelings about any of them, if not a mild dislike for most. I think they're the weakest point of the book. I wanted them more fleshed out, I wanted more character development. All of them stay pretty much the same, throughout the whole book. Kenny and Vahni, the most diverse of the characters got very little "screen time" compared to the other 3 characters, especially coming towards the end of the book. I usually have no problems relating to at least one character, or rooting for them, but in this case, I had no one. They're a group of friends who essentially treat each other like family, yet shit on each other and try and ruin their future to save their own asses. I mean, if there was some commentary there about human selfishness, I missed it and I guess that's entirely on me.
There was a case of insta love in there, too which kinda brought the book down for me.
Lastly, the book could do with more editing. The dialogue was so clunky at times, and honestly that's an easy fix. Some sentences were atrocious, which again is just the case of editing, as the whole book was written quite well. There's one particular sentence I have in mind which is the length of a sizeable paragraph and I'm baffled how it ended up in the ARC.
People draw a lot of comparisons between this book and Ready Player One, and honestly this one is much better (RPO is garbage - nothing can change my mind about it), so I guess what I'm trying to say is... although I had issues with some things, I enjoyed others, and I would classify this book as a fun, thrilling and quite spooky read and I would recommend it to any VR, video game, sci-fi fans, especially fans of RPO.