Book Review - Endgame

Endgame, The Calling
Author: James Frey & Nils Johnson-Shelton

Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers (7 Oct 2014)
ISBN: 978-0062332585

From the back

Endgame is real. Endgame is now. Endgame has begun. Twelve ancient cultures were chosen millennia ago to represent humanity in Endgame, a global game that will decide the fate of humankind. Endgame has always been apossibility, but never a reality… until now.

Twelve meteorites have just struck Earth, eachmeteorite containing a message for a Player who has been trained for this moment. At stake for the Players: saving their bloodline, as well as the fate of the world. And only one can win.

Endgame is real. Endgame is now. Endgame has begun.

Google Niantic is building a mobile location-based augmented reality videogame inextricably tied to the books and mythology, a major prize will be tied to a puzzle in each book, and Twentieth Century Fox has bought the movie rights.

Read the Books. Find the Clues. Solve the Puzzle. Who will Win?

There has been quite a widespread PR campaign surrounding this book and you can watchthe trailers for the series below...


My Review

I came across Endgame on 'Bloggers Required' which is a website where companies reach out for bloggers to review certain items, most of it is usually irrelevent to what I blog about but then I saw this book. When I read the synopsis I thought it sound absolutely amazing and applied to be a reviewer and as you can tell I was very lucky to be sent an arc copy for review.

When it came and I opened the packaging I was a little overwhelmed by the size of it...it was a big gold brick, nevertheless I was excited to start. It was cold and wet out so I made a cuppa, grabbed a blanket and settled down for the long haul read.

Unfortunately in my honest opinion, the book did not hold up to my expectations. In fact I actully got rather fed up with the book not far in! I did perserveer though and my opinions did change a bit the further I got into it. I love Children's books and YA novels as much as I do adult literature but this didn't seem to fit in any category for me.

The sentences and chapters were very short and I got easily bored with the stop. start. manner in which it was written, I like a bit more tooth and grit to a book which the one or two page chapters didn't give me. They weren't even chapters per se but each 'chapter' was focussed on a different player and so it jumped about a bit. Because of this it took me quite a while to connect with any of the characters although I did connect to one character, Sarah the most and I have very mixed feelings with regards to the others. In part you can't help to feel sorry for the other players.

Things do pick up towards the end though so you really do have to perservere past the quick changeyness of the beginning and there are some surprises along the way. The book is definitely left with a sense of wanting to read the next purely to find out what happened although I am likely to have forgotten about it by the time the next book comes out and I probably won't read the second.

Will the puzzle get solved? I don't know in all honesty, can people be bothered to put the time and energy in these days? Maybe for the prize money they can, my only concern is that you will have people trapsing all over the place and some very disappointed teens who may have spent a lot of money trying to track it down. I can only guess at this of course because my review copy did not have the real clues in which is just as well as they looked really hard!

I am so mixed about this book. The only thing I can say is that this is possibly down to own personal taste, I can't say that I reccommend it so you will just have to try it for yourself if you are at all intrigued!