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A review by wingedcreature
The Battle by Karuna Riazi
2.0
I was really excited about The Battle after I read The Gauntlet a couple of years ago. The Battle was just okay for me, and I didn't like it as much as I thought I would.
This book focuses on Ahmad, Farah's brother. I don't know why but I just wasn't as interested in his story as I was in Farah's. It did have a video game sort of feel to it, which seems right up Ahmad's alley. I'm not really a video game person, so I wonder if that's part of it.
The story was interesting, and I'm glad we got to see Ahmad years after the events of The Gauntlet. The game has definitely changed, which we see throughout the book. It's less Jumanji and more Ready Player One. At least, from what I know about Ready Player One. I still haven't read it, so I can't say for sure. But this book does have more of a video game feel than a board game feel to it.
I was intrigued that the game managed to rebuild itself into a more modern version of the one we saw in The Gauntlet. It was harder to picture, and I felt like we didn't the descriptions we saw in the first book. It was a lot harder to picture in this book, and I felt like the rules weren't as clear in this book as they were in the first one.
Ahmad's drawings sounded pretty cool- I found myself wondering if he was drawing the places in the Gauntlet, and if he didn't remember what had happened there. This version seemed somewhat familiar to him, but since it was really different, I wonder if he knew it was familiar but couldn't place it. That's what made me wonder if he had remembered what happened years earlier and if maybe the drawings were a way to figure out or remember what had happened. I could be completely off with this, of course, but I did think about that quite a bit at the beginning.
My Rating: 2 stars. The Battle was just okay for me. It was nice to see what happened to Ahmad and Farah after the Gauntlet was destroyed but I just wasn't as interested in this story as I wanted to be.
This book focuses on Ahmad, Farah's brother. I don't know why but I just wasn't as interested in his story as I was in Farah's. It did have a video game sort of feel to it, which seems right up Ahmad's alley. I'm not really a video game person, so I wonder if that's part of it.
The story was interesting, and I'm glad we got to see Ahmad years after the events of The Gauntlet. The game has definitely changed, which we see throughout the book. It's less Jumanji and more Ready Player One. At least, from what I know about Ready Player One. I still haven't read it, so I can't say for sure. But this book does have more of a video game feel than a board game feel to it.
I was intrigued that the game managed to rebuild itself into a more modern version of the one we saw in The Gauntlet. It was harder to picture, and I felt like we didn't the descriptions we saw in the first book. It was a lot harder to picture in this book, and I felt like the rules weren't as clear in this book as they were in the first one.
Ahmad's drawings sounded pretty cool- I found myself wondering if he was drawing the places in the Gauntlet, and if he didn't remember what had happened there. This version seemed somewhat familiar to him, but since it was really different, I wonder if he knew it was familiar but couldn't place it. That's what made me wonder if he had remembered what happened years earlier and if maybe the drawings were a way to figure out or remember what had happened. I could be completely off with this, of course, but I did think about that quite a bit at the beginning.
My Rating: 2 stars. The Battle was just okay for me. It was nice to see what happened to Ahmad and Farah after the Gauntlet was destroyed but I just wasn't as interested in this story as I wanted to be.