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Description
One last game. One final ranking. One chance to walk away with a life worth living.Every child must play the Game. From the age of five, they learn the rules and what failure costs. Most of them spend their lives learning how not to lose.This is his final run, and he is done playing it safe.On his final attempt, he is chasing something almost no one dares to try. Finishing ranked number one. Winning would make him legendary. Losing would leave him alive, trapped with whatever future the system allows.The real danger is not losing the Game. It is discovering what winning actually takes. Read more
Publisher : Terry Schott
Accessibility : Learn more
Publication date : December 25, 2013
Edition : 3rd
Language : English
File size : 2.6 MB
Screen Reader : Supported
Enhanced typesetting : Enabled
X-Ray : Enabled
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Top Amazon Reviews
Format: Kindle
The Game is a fantastic, witty, fast-paced must-read every single day. I highly recommend reading it, because not only does it widen your perspective on life but it simply makes you think. And we all know that in a world full of those idiots who run red lights, thinking is just about a virtue. But. I can go all day on and on about how great and creative this book is. Don't get me wrong here. I'll say it in advance, too. There still are issues. There still are idiots. There are the Sunday-slow-driver idiots, too. You can't escape them, especially with this book. All those idiots and all their idiotic thoughts are amplified. Highly. In. This. Book. So: warning. The main character, Zach. He's a famous guy. "The Game" is what made him famous. It's a stimulation of a completely different planet and universe designed to teach kids. It's the system that replaced teachers and schools almost completely. You send 'em in with no memory and when they get back from seemingly living and dying thinking that was their life they're supposedly smarter about life. Pretty unique, however The Game has revolutionized the Real World and not just in teaching kids. All currency is based off of it (Credits). Losing the game? You're losing your very life and luxuries. Winning, like Zach? You're famous, have sponsors and TV shows off of you and your fake lives in the Real World. You'd assume once you're rich, you're rich forever. Nope. Zach has (HAD) a girlfriend who went in and the supercomputer of the game killed her in baby form (there was a 0.2% chance). Instantaneously she went into poverty and couldn't even afford going into the Fake World as a plant. She went from top 10,000 rankings to no one. She was never heard of again. But so far that hasn't happened to Zach, the lucky guy. His sponsor (called Patron) is the very guy that oversaw the making of The Game. He is Brandon, who also is rich (it never ends, does it?). But supposedly even though he was like, the executive director, he really can't control the Fake World anymore.. the world he calls Sylvia. She can talk to him. In a supercomputer way. And she is an AI and nothing more...supposedly. Zach is nearing the end of his childhood, and soon will not be allowed to go back in The Game. Everyone is excited. The Most Searched Guy is going for a last play. Will he try to end number 1 or keep it safe and stay as rich as he is? No one knows. But more disturbing things are coming up. Zach's old girlfriend is given a free play. One free play. Out of all the people, billions of them. On the anniversary of The Game that person is given a free play. No one can figure it out. Coincidence? You'll find out, reader. The old girlfriend also mysteriously doesn't have many Credits, yet she has a ton of expensive power-ups for her play. The play may make her famous again, or may simply be wasted and kick her back into a governmental camp. How did she get those Credits?? She didn't. Sylvia did. All of a sudden, things start happening on December 21, 2012. Zach learns how to make a religion. His girlfriend becomes his girlfriend. And both worlds they live in will never be the same. THE REVIEW: I love this book. All the characters are well-developed and the storyline suits them perfectly. Everything about the settings, the everything, flows flawlessly together. However.. There are a few spelling and grammatical errors on the Kindle Fire edition. Nothing big, only like a missed period or something. Not distracting or the sort, there was only like three I spotted. Because this book is relatively long, I can believe they were mistakes. Dialogue gets a little awkward at times. In the beginning, I had trouble believing mature people could talk like that. Of course, they live in a completely different universe though. They have different cultures and the sort, so maybe I was expecting too much. Or was I? Nothing in the Real World seemed too different, really. You have very minor technological advances, a population obsessed with watching Real people live Fake lives, and nothing different. They're just..people. That's where I was disappointed. Where's the culture? Did anything appear weird about the Fake World to Real people? Anything? There was nothing at all. Altogether, I absolutely love this book. There's no inappropriate content for children at all, everyone would in fact love it. It's not too long at all, highly engaging, and MAKES YOU THINK. How often does a book do that? Where you put the book down, grab a Kindle, and look up information? If you feel like you need to put your mind on something new and fun and time-using like a book, read this one. It has all you need and and want, and more. The Game is Life but Life is Not The Game.
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Reviewed in the United States on May 4, 2014 by Lizard Geek
Format: Kindle
This is a really well thought out story. I really liked it, and -had to- immediately start book 2. Fair warning- there's a cliffhanger (Which isn't such a spoiler, given that there are 4 published books as of this review). I know, I know, the whole world-as-game/dream thing is kind of meh, but this.... Oh, this was VERY well done. I found the story interesting and engaging right from the beginning, I appreciated the characterization, and I began to really root for the two main characters. I was sad for them when a very bad thing happened - that means the author did their job of making me care about our heroes. If I had to describe this book using other stories, I'd say its The Matrix plus Hunger Games-ish. I was impressed with the way the author combined explaining the way the world(s) work with some backstory and the events happening now. There wasn't a lot of "I'm a new author and I don't know how to explain the stuff underneath the action" type of passages. I thought the foreshadowing was handled well. Something that irked me, and yet I completely understand and support its inclusion, are the constant little mysteries. Nameless yet detailed good and bad (or both?) guys, hints at the world beyond the surface, characters doing things for reasons that seem suspect or unexplained...argh! It's maddening, and a tease, and eventually things get explained. It really keeps the tension and the interest high. I didn't find any glaring format or grammar errors in book 1 - either I'm un-observant, was carried away by the story, or they've been fixed. Book 2, at 85% complete, has several instances where sentences run together or the next words continue a few line spaces down from where it should - not story killers, but they exist. Overall - get this book, it's reallllllly good.
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Reviewed in the United States on March 19, 2014 by NewClassic Mel
Format: Kindle
This is an incredible book! I read it in one sitting and then over the next several weeks my wife and I read it again approximately four or five more times. We were so amazed at how this book intrigued and altered us that we could not wait to get our hands on the next book in the series. That is how mind blowing this work of art is! If you are interested in spirituality, human evolution, universal consciousness, or even just the possibility of a new, mind altering reality, this book will BLOW YOUR MIND! Books have always been my best friends. I feel for the characters, I get immersed in their personal make up, as well as how they interact with the world and those around them. This is one best friend I will be coming back to over and over again to rejoin these amazing characters. It embraced a spiritual aspect and paganism aspect that was very comforting to me as it made me feel that I am not alone in my thoughts of how the world truly operates or how it could be run. For those of the reviewers who bashed it for grammatical errors, I am sorry you were not in touch with your own understanding of the English language enough to be able to insert any minor corrections yourself mentally and carry on with the book. I think it is ridiculous to bash a book for a few spelling errors when the idea of the book itself could quite literally, change our current existence and thought processes. Thought quite literally, creates reality. This is one of the best books I have ever read! It is intriguing and sucks you in from the very beginning. The time spent developing the characters was well spent as it made me feel like I personally knew and could seriously relate to many personality traits and characteristics they exuded. I have read all of Terry's books for this entire series and each one read was like crack to a drug addict for the book addict within me. I was like Gollum from Lord of the Rings crouched over my kindle while caressing this book and uttering, "my precious" as I explored each enticing page. Mr. Schott is an amazing artist. He has the ability to twist and manipulate words and explore phenomenons that most writers would not be able to explore, let alone share or even attempt to explain in such a riveting manner. I could not wait to get my hands on the next book and at this point in time have added Terry to my top ten favourite authors. I cherish each one and go back to them often to rejoin these emotional, intelligent, fascinating, and incredibly vivid characters. I recommend this book to anyone who wishes to have their current reality blown to smithereens and replaced with the most fascinating alternate reality I have ever experienced. PLEASE read this book and share it with as many people as you can. It will change your life. You will never be the same once you have read, "The Game". I know that my wife, myself, and all my friends I have shared this book with are now forever altered and inspired for the better. Respectfully, Cheryle A. Kirkland
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Reviewed in the United States on March 20, 2014 by Cheryle Kirkland
Format: Kindle
I got this book free after my teenage daughter started telling me about a book she picked up at school to read. It sounded so good to me that I told her I was going to get it and we could read it together. When I found it for free it was a great surprise! I ended up reading the book before she got to finish it, (she loves reading but is very busy with many irons in the fire and she ended up putting it aside for quite some time.). What appealed to me about the book was how the author made things seem absolutely believable and understandable. I feel like I know the characters really well and the plot was something that I just could not stop thinking about. Even when I would force myself to stop reading for the night, I kept going over things I read in my mind on repeat. I finished the book and went on to the next one. I feel like it is a young adult novel and yet I read it and as you can tell, I loved it and I am 50 years old. I went on to purchase everything I could find by this author and began following him on FB. He has some short stories he has not finished and some reviewers were negative about the fact that they were never completed into entire novels but I don't care about that, I bought those as well and I know when I finally get to read the others things I bought I will wish he gave us more to read too! Right now, I am just finishing up "Interlude Brandon" and though I was kind of bummed that the book was about Brandon and not the one main set of characters the other books featured, it ended up that it was a most valuable addition to the storyline to hear about Brandon's life. I truly cannot express how much I love the ideas that this author presents and I am glad he decided to share his talent and hard work with us by becoming an author!
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Reviewed in the United States on February 23, 2016 by Charlene Heath
Format: Kindle
First off, I must state that there were many things about this book that I liked, and I was disappointed to affirm that I may have to wait quite a while for Book Two to come out. In many ways it was a fun read. But I can't give it more than three or three and a half stars right now because of all the grammar problems, mostly in regards to punctuation. For many people this is not a major concern, and I understand that, but I found the problems so distracting that it took me away from the story constantly. I almost stopped reading thirty pages in because the errors were so consistent and glaring. I don't know if the author needs to brush up on sentence structure rules, or if it's a case of insufficient proof-reading, but it definitely detracts from the quality of the writing. I would say the majority of sentences on each page are comma splices (sentences only joined by a comma, with no coordinating conjunction), which lends to confusion, especially about the connection between the two thoughts. Again, most people may not care, but it bothered me. The worst, though is the poor use of apostrophes: always using "It's" for possessives, instead of its, and sometimes using 's to indicate plurals. There are also a large number of sentences scattered about that are missing words or containing extra ones, especially verbs, so the reader has to fill in the blanks or figure out what was meant. The reason this bothers me so much is that in many other ways this book is just great, and I think if it were polished up appropriately, it would rival the work of many more well-known authors .... I think Terry Schott has a great future, but things like this can really make the work appear less professional than it is. On that note, I know that sometimes authors read these comments and edit manuscripts in response -- if I find that has been done at some point I would probably change my rating, because I do like so much about it, and I wouldn't want readers to be put off by a problem that no longer existed. Now, on to the good aspects: a lot of the concepts raised in this story are not totally new, but are arranged together in a new and original manner. So some of the core "philosophies" are familiar enough to feel comfortable and easy to assimilate, yet the implications of those ideas as presented here feel somewhat novel and intriguing. It's not the Matrix exactly, but it has the same effect in causing the reader to sit back and look at his or her own reality in a new way, even if just for a moment. I liked all the main characters, even those whom I also want to despise, which can be hard to pull off. The storyline is intriguing, and I felt a genuine jolt of surprise near the very end, plus a ton of questions that I want answered right away! I really am excited to read the next installment and hope it doesn't take too long to get here. I am intrigued to see what happens with a few threads that seem to have been just left dangling so far (the first Sever Stick??? Merely a ploy to introduce the concept, or connected to the later darknesss?), and how they fit into the brief glimpses we get into the behind the scenes action. I really enjoyed the use of "historical" artifacts to build the fuller concepts of the worlds and to expand perspective; the author alternates between the viewpoints of various characters within and without the Game, but also introduces magazine articles, interview transcripts, and the like. A lot of the time this can be jarring, but I think it works pretty seamlessly here. I was occasionally thrown by the introductions of a brand new voice, but not long enough to be drawn away from the action, and in some ways that was what kept the intrigue going. In summation, The Game presents a fast-paced, engaging journey into an intriguing world that entertains but also challenges one to think -- I couldn't get wholly absorbed because of the above stated writing errors, but I am glad I stuck with it and am interested to see what happens next.
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Reviewed in the United States on January 24, 2013 by Savvy Reader
Format: Kindle
I really enjoyed the book. The concept was great. The characters could use some more development would have been neat to see personality traits bleed over into "the game" from Zach and Alex. I also had a few issues with some concepts in the book that didn't make sense and it bothered me a little. I did get past these issues though and did like it enough to read the next 3 books. *************SPOILER BELOW****************** The concept that really didn't make sense and bothered me right from the get go is the time dilation. So I really like the idea of 74 years going by in around 6 weeks BUT then we have people watching the streams from this sped up time game with an hour delay and its not recordable by the public. So 1 year and 8 months and some change happens in one day so how can anyone watch anything I mean like every minute 10.3 hours are going by my point is if you watch an 1 hour long wedding video you just missed the next 25 days of their game lives. So for Brandon to keep an eye on them missing no time other than when they are meditating/praying (really cool idea by the way and everything that included) you would need like 3,000,000 people on staff (which wasn't the case) watching staggered sections of their lives and they wouldn't even have time to compare notes about it let alone let Brandon know about it if something was amiss if we are counting sleeping and breaks and comparing the sections that they are able to watch I'm thinking more like 500,000,000 people and that's just to watch one person (hence how the whole earths history fits into 30 years really cool idea again why it gets 4 stars) but I digress. And its entirely possible I may be strange for being really bothered by it but I'm a numbers guy. I don't want to give all of the really cool stuff away but its worth reading just for some of the really great science fiction ideas in this book. Spelling errors are annoying but they weren't overwhelming not too many and they were all typos not like the author has bad grammar or anything which are the ones that bother me then they get repeated but not the case with this book. Lesson for authors/editors use spell check going to have to click through all the names/places but its worth it.
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Reviewed in the United States on September 1, 2015 by Adam Reese
Format: Kindle
If you're someone that loves Ender's Game, The Hunger Games, Divergent, The Maze Runner, this series is just for you and your young ones. When my kid came home from school with the book, a book loan from his teacher's personal books (BTW Teachers don't get paid enough!) my first instinct was to check the reviews to see if it was kid oriented enough for a 10 year old, but there again my kid as an advanced reader has also already read The Martian several times since before the movie came out, so when his teacher said it was okay for my son to do his assigment about the book, my son of course was excited to say the least. Needless to say, I read this one in a day and my kid finally caught up. We are reading the series together now and we're in just 4 weeks on book 5. I can not stress enough how fantastic the story of Zack's Avatar- Trew and Alexandra Montoyas-Danielle is and the people that surround them, that in reality aren't really older than the very character of Dani and Trew but to ponder on the science of "What if this is our reality" since many a physicist have said before that humanity is just a simulation and somewhere there's a martian laughing at the pure comedy of our lives (insert laughter-->) and you try not to be sucked in to the story but you do, it happens, you become part of it and you laugh and cry with the characters and this multidimensional reality of sorts that encases each and every person that play a key role to the development of the story. And you love them and your mourn them when they go. I couldn't wait just waiting for my kid to get back from school so we would get back to reading together 1 chapter me, and 2 him (he picks how many he reads which is great for parent/kid reading time) and just like that feel anger towards the bad guys, Carl, oh Carl I was so angry but then he's become quite the hero of sorts and love to love and to hate certain other characters as well until you find out the motives driving their actions, because to do what must be done-to save humanity is never an easy task. This is also a story where the a girl needs no saving and is smart enough to look after herself. The writer gave each character meaning, and didn't over inflate the arcs of each person but just enough of everything and that is why there is such quality in this book that is exquisite and fresh when all you see published nowadays is nothing but filling between stories by other authors but not this one. This is a story that compells you to want more like a starving newborn and you just can't get enough of it. So much scifi, enough geek, no adult content, a book you can enjoy with your kids and a book you'll be happy your kids are reading because there are lessons to be taught here, of life, love, honesty, death, sacrifice, forgiveness and change. There is so much more I can say but instead of spoiling it for you I'll just tell you to read the book/series for you will not regret one bit of it. Such a great book, such a great series that 'Id love to see adapted in any screen form. I'm surprised there's not many reviews for this. People don't know what they are missing.
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Reviewed in the United States on April 18, 2017 by Mozart’s Star
Format: Kindle
I first bought The Game back in 2015 because it was free in the Kindle store and it sounded interesting. Since then I have read it a handful of times prior to Goodreads enabling re-read capabilities, and it is probably one book that I recommend to everyone that I meet. The Game by Terry Schott is a fantastic start to The Game is Life series. The planet of Tygon has revolutionized the educational system. Instead of going through school, they play The Game - a virtual reality where they are socialized through the multiple plays that they have, experiencing many lifetimes and experiences until they age out at 18 and have to enter Tygonian society. It's the 30 year anniversary of the Game, and one of Tygon's best Gamers Zack enters for his final play. Will he finish in the number one slot? Will his careful planning be successful? Time is running out... but for what? Schott manages to weave a tale that delves deep into philosophical theories that isn't cumbersome and manages to remain accessible to the average reader - a rare talent for an author. As a person that not only studied philosophy and religion in university but also wrote honors theses on the topics, I love books that make me think deeply about the world around me but are also super fun. This doesn't feel like reading Heidegger, but themes of religion, reality, Foucault's assertions about education, and the meaning of being are there for the reader that wants to look deeper. The thing that I love about sci-fi is that it serves as a lens for humanity, it can be an allegory for the present or a cautionary tale for the future. Or in the case of The Game it serves to answer the question: what if we are all living in a computer simulation? I find that the story is so well developed that I do not mind the handful of typos that tends to be a common theme for self-published titles. This is an excellent story that deserves to be read: it is always free on Kindle, which is why I highly recommend it to everyone looking for sci-fi recommendations.
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Reviewed in the United States on May 19, 2018 by Kaleena @ Reader Voracious Blog