27/7 - Due to some hasty hold placing at the library I somehow ended up with this book (#3) borrowed before the previous book (#2). Then I did it again with Richelle Mead's Blood Promise and Shadow Kiss, somehow mistaking Blood Promise for the third book in the series, when it's actually the fourth. So I had to quickly get a hold of the next books in both series and read them, so I could get to this and Blood Promise before they were due at the library (they're obviously popular as they immediately had further holds on them). Didn't quite get all that? Don't worry, it's a bit strange and complicated and comes from placing a hold through the library's computer without access to GR to check the true series order (no, I don't have an iPad or phone with internet access), instead of doing it at home with GR open in another tab, as I usually do.

Oh well, it looks like it's going to work out fine in the end. I have until the 4/8 before this and Blood Promise are due back and while this is a decent sized book, I managed to read Buzz (which is only slightly shorter than Bubble) in just two days earlier this month, so I think I can get all three books finished before I have to start paying fines for them. Plus, I'm really pumped for the big ending, how everything's going to be wrapped up.

Will HP finally manage to kick his fame addiction (or any of the others)? What's going to happen to Rebecca when she starts working for the company that runs The Game? Will they beat The Game? Or will the ending be like those horror movies where you think the final characters have managed to kill the unkillable bad guy, only to have him prove he truly is unkillable (think Jason Voorhies) by popping back up again to chop off one more head before disappearing back into the forest. I think I sped through my last book Whisky Charlie Foxtrot so fast because I knew that this was next on my internal list and I could not wait to get started.

Although, now that I could be seconds away from doing just that (depending on how fast I type) I'm nervous it won't be as good as the first two, that it'll be a let down after all the tension of The Game and Buzz. I guess there are only two ways to find out, read the GR reviews (obviously not going to do that because not only will I ruin any plot twists, but I also still won't have a definitive answer because what one person one stars another five stars) or read the book. I'm going to read the book and try to forget the fact that I happened to catch a glimpse of the average rating for the book. 3.65 is a good book, just good, not great or fantastic or amazing, but I'm not going to think about that I'm just going to trust that my opinion is usually the opposite (or at least different) of a lot of others and read with an open mind. To be continued...

28/7 - As I exhibited with my pre-review ramble last night, I was a little bit excited and nervous about starting the possibly climatic, or possibly disappointing, final book in this fast-paced series. Now I don't know if it was a symptom of that mix of excitement and nerves, but I didn't really notice or become annoyed by the quick POV changes that I felt a little plagued by in Buzz and Game. I wonder whether, now that I've gotten over those first date jitters, the lightning fast changes will become more apparent and irritating. I'll be back tomorrow to talk about it.

Oh, before I go I just want to mention that I just realised that with 400 pages to go in Bubble, approx. 450 in Shadow Kiss and a little over 500 in Blood Promise that I've got about 1300 pges to read in six days and a few hours. With a little rounding off that works out to around 200 pages a day, which doesn't sound too hard, until you know that you're reading to a timetable and know that if you only manage 100 pages on one day that means you'll have to make it up somewhere in the remaining days, either with pages added to every day or just a chunk to one day. All that mathematising could lead to stressful, rushed reading. I think, if it comes down to enjoying my reading or paying a small fine (and at only 50c a book per day it would be small), I'll pay the fine and finish the book happily rather than hurriedly skimming it in the car outside the library (my 'I have to return this book today' last chance reading spot).

Later - How bloody stupid can HP be? Imagining that, after being bitten by a rattlesnake and passing out (supposedly due to the effects of the venom, not sure how fast rattlesnake venom would take to kill you, but that's another discussion) he would be able to successfully inject himself with multiple syringes of antivenin, then collect all his breaking and entering tools and a loaded gun and get back to his apartment before once again passing out. It certainly seems crystal clear to me that the bad guys came back, fixed him up and deposited him back on his own bed, all for some nefarious ulterior motive. Possibly so he can be setup as their patsy in whatever terroristic act they're planning. I really shake my head at HP's stupidity, stunningly bad decision-making and blindness to what's really going on around him. I was very pleased when I read that he hadn't smoked marijuana since it got him in so much trouble in Dubai, over six months ago, because really, look at the trouble he gets himself into when he's not high. To be continued...

30/7 - I feel like HP, with no idea of who to trust, whose story, or how much of it, to believe, constantly jumping from theory to theory about what's really going on and who's behind it all.

Was Uncle Tage telling Rebecca the truth and he's being set up by de la Motte to appear sinister? Or has he cleverly revealed just enough of the truth that his story will sound plausible to Rebecca, encouraging her to help him 'help' HP. Also Nora and Jeff... they don't seem all that innocent and straight forward. Some of their answers, like how they found HP so easily, give me suspicions that they're actually working for the Game and have been tracking him for days, or even weeks. How do we know that they're not the next door neighbours and aren't guiding HP towards their intended target for assassination/detonation, all ready for him to be the fall guy? Everything about them is just too convenient for my suspicious mind. To be continued...

31/7 - Well, it looks like I've jinxed myself with all that talk of needing to read 200 pages a day for six days. I am down to two days and a few hours (this is being written at approx. the same time as my update on the 28th) and I haven't even finished the first book - AAARRRRGGGGHHHH READING STRESS!!!!!!!!!!!

In regards to the book itself - exciting, tense, complicated, keeping me guessing at all times. Also the quick-fire POV changes seem to have mysteriously disappeared (or I'm so involved in the story that I haven't noticed them, not sure which), for which I'm grateful. Manga has returned and I'm not sure I believe what he's saying anymore than I believe Uncle Tage's spiel. I'm getting paranoid over fictional character's true motives and I can't stop wondering about who the real Game master is - not knowing is making me a bit insane, also as I read back what I've just wrote I realise that I'm repeating myself, sorry about that. To be continued...

2/7 - The last 10 pages I spent the whole time going "No! This can't be the way it all ends." I was so disappointed thinking that it was going to end the way those annoying horror movies do, with the bad guy rising back up and escaping only to live another day in the next movie, or book, only we know that this is the last in the series and then we would have ended up with a very unsatisfactory ending. Fortunately, that wasn't exactly how things went - the 'bad' guy did rise up to fight another day, but he also died. Eventually, it all made sense, but it's still very complicated, especially HP and Rebecca's father and Sammer's involvement during the 60s. I now have over 900 pages to read in 1.5 days. AAARRGGHH MORE READING STRESS!!

22/7 - Great plot! Great suspense! I just wish the author hadn't decided to make his POV changes even worse than they were in Game. The changes are lightning fast, leaving the reader with a paragraph or two only, before the story switches from one sibling to the other, and then back again. The switches are very annoying but they definitely achieve their desired outcome (or what I believe was the author's desired outcome) - keeping the suspense level raised and forcing me to read pages, if not chapters more than I had intended when I first picked up the book.

As with Game I'm finding myself drawn to, and more sympathetic towards, Rebecca's POV. HP is continuing to show himself to be a drug-addicted idiot who never learns. You'd think that being used as a patsy for a contract killer's murder would teach him that DRUGS ARE BAD and are only going to get him into more trouble, but no, as soon as he is released from the Saudi prison (where a pair of lawless, ruleless police-types have been waterboarding him for hours, even days) he's looking for his next hit from the bong. He's also still addicted to the Game and the feelings of fame and power he gets from the supposed accolades of playing the Game. Currently can't see a whole lot of redeeming features in HP, I thought I did at the end of the last book, when he fought back and managed to break free of the Game. Unfortunately, it seems he has a seriously addictive-type personality, and so anything that a person could possibly get addicted to he will be addicted to. To be continued...

23/7 - I'm really speeding through this. Due to those annoyingly frequent POV changes the suspense never really dies down, if one sibling's side of the story relents on the tension a little the other keeps dragging you along - for the reader it never really lets go. Late last night I glanced at the clock at one point, thinking "It's getting late, I'll just finish this chapter and then turn out the light.", then I get to the end of the 'chapter' and glance at the clock again (just to see if I can hurry through one more tense chapter), only to find that 45 minutes and the rest of that original chapter plus three extras have gone by without me even realising it (I still managed to squeeze another chapter in before going to sleep).

The description of the business ArgosEye is in is frighteningly believable and disturbing considering the epidemic of trolls we have been experiencing over the last months and years. The thought that there might be a whole company of them working to bury true reviews from real consumers upsets my sense of fair play. In Buzz not only are they working on actual review sites like this one, but also all the social media sites that most of us use. With the type of troll ArgosEye employs we would never know if we were dealing with one, they don't behave in a suspicious manner the way your normal run of the mill GR troll does. They have full online lives, join all the right sites months before making their move on behalf of which ever client hired them to make sure their name is shown in a positive light. They don't all start flame or praise wars, mostly they're a lot less conspicuous, simply writing multiple reviews in favour of their client's products, but not all on the same day the way most of GR's less intelligent trolls do. I wonder if one day that kind of fake review might become illegal and prosecutable in a court of law... To be continued...

24/7 - Yep, finished that last night with ease, even got a decent start on the next book in the pile. This is definitely a middle-of-the-series book, you couldn't read it without having read the first book, and only the most determined of people could read this without going on to the final book - not so much a cliffhanger, more simply a case of nothing being tied up or concluded in any way. In fact Game was less conclusionless, possibly in case it was a one hit wonder, than Buzz.

Buzz didn't focus so much on the game. It was mentioned in reference and as background, but as far as HP knew he wasn't playing the game. Despite the fact that he wasn't receiving missions, or anything else through the phone, both HP and Rebecca still appeared to be dancing to the puppet master's tune, at least they were as far as the italicised conversations that preceded a few of the chapters seemed to show.

The surprise reveal of who was trolling Rebecca was indeed a surprise to me. I had my mind set on one particular character who I was sure Rebecca was discounting as not being guilty way too quickly. I thought this person had a far stronger motive for wanting revenge towards Rebecca than she believed and was already planning how I would write about it without revealing the culprit. So when my suspicions were proven wrong I was quite surprised, in fact my suspected unsub ended up helping Rebecca identify the real bad guy. Oh well, I rarely guess the bad guy in mysteries, so the fact that I was totally off isn't too surprising.

I would highly recommend this, and probably the whole series (although can't guarantee the quality of the third book, not having read it), to anyone who's a fan of other Swedish/Danish crime thrillers.

11/2 - Swedish/Danish stories are over-running our screens and pages. You can hardly look at a tv trailer or check out the new releases without coming across something from Denmark or Sweden. Not that I'm complaining, without them I would have missed out on great tv like The Bridge and The Killing or fantastic books like Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and The Game. That's right, 62 pages in and I'm already calling it fantastic. It's half gamer/techno thriller, half crime drama (at least so far).

I like Rebecca a lot more than HP at the moment because every time I read an HP scene I get the feeling that his next assignment will involve committing violence (or even murder) against another person and his punishment for failing to complete the assignment (which is what I assume would happen, at least the first time) is sure to be dreadful pain and suffering of himself or someone he loves (his sister Rebecca, for example). The scene where Rebecca is doing some personal defence training with her alpha group teammates and is caught in a suffocating headlock, but manages to harness her panic into an explosive attack, resulting in her 'attacking' teammate down on the floor with a broken nose gushing blood was very satisfying for one of those girls whose only weapon is her nails. I was especially triumphant when the instructor praised her and basically told her teammate to suck it up. It reminded me of a scene in the Buffy episode, Phases, the one where Oz first finds out he's a werewolf and Larry admits to Xander that he's gay. There's a scene in that episode where everyone is in gym class and they are paired up in order for the girls to practice self-defence - Cordelia and Xander, Willow and Oz, and unfortunately for Buffy she's paired with Larry. Willow has been warning Buffy that she has to act more like a 'girly girl' who can't kick vampires over the fence, and, to begin with Buffy attempts to remember this. Larry doesn't make this easy, as he makes lewd comments and sexual innuendos out of the feeble grunts Buffy emits as she 'attempts' to flip him over her shoulder, as the teacher is instructing the girls to do. In the end Buffy's had enough and oops, there he goes flying through the air to land flat on his back. Willow gives Buffy an exasperated look, but all the girls (and some guys, too) at home (I'm sure) were going "Take that _______ (any boy who made life difficult during school)!!" Both great scenes of girls being underestimated because of their physical size - I love a strong female lead who blasts the chauvinistic opinions of her male counterparts by saving them/beating them in a physical competition. To be continued...

22/3 - I've really been looking forward to getting back to this after my forced intermission due to library due dates and fines. I considered reading back over my own review to re-familiarise myself with where I was up to in the plot, but then I forgot. It didn't matter though, because as soon as I found the page I was up to it and started reading it all came rushing back. I meant to say this earlier in my review, but I forgot - I don't like the cover image on my copy of the book. The woman playing Rebecca is fine, possibly more model-like, less ass-kicking security officer-like than I would've imagined, but HP has a slightly suave, artfully mussed look that is nothing like the way he's described in the book. In my head I've been seeing a cross between Seth Rogen, Michael Cena, and Jesse Eisenberg. A bit bumbling, not fit (but not fat), actually scruffy rather than artfully mussed, just not well put together. The cover model looks like what he is, a model (very handsome, actually, a cross between Ryan Reynolds and Jonny Lee Miller when he's doing the unshaved look), when he should have looked a bit unkempt, a few cheeseburgers away from 'dumpy'.  He should be wearing slightly ratty clothes (grey hoodie, worn black jeans, scuffed white sneakers, t-shirt with some kind of disaffected youth slogan on it), not designer jeans and leather jacket and an over-priced plain black t-shirt, HP is not that smooth. To be continued...

23/3 - God HP is dense!!  How many times and in how many ways does Erman have to say it before the truth sinks through HP's thick skull?  The Game is using him!  He didn't choose to play The Game, The Game chose him to play.

Also, not a big fan of the way the story cuts from HP to Rebecca and back again for no apparent reason.  It's not like each interjection into HP's story takes us to breaking news in Rebecca's life or that there's some immediately obvious connection between those exact moments in Rebecca and his lives.  The interjections seem to happen at random moments and take us to mostly irrelevant (at least to what's happening to HP) events.  Maybe the connections will become clear later, but at the moment they're just confusing and disturbing to the flow of the main plot - HP's.  To be continued...

Later that night - On page 215 HP says that he can believe that he was tricked into taking part in The Game, and that bored rich guys were betting on him for their entertainment; but he can't believe that it's being played all around the world, that jobs can be contracted out through The Game and that there are players in every walk of life, that anyone might be an 'ant' sent to watch him.  HIs refusal (in the face of good evidence) to believe what's right in front of his face just screams of stupidity, to me.  His apartment's been set on fire, Manga/Farook's work place was set on fire and the whole thing would have been filmed if the police hadn't coincidentally been just around the corner to respond to the emergency call and scare off the arsonists, he's come to the conclusion (on his own) that he was set up at the bridge due to his personal belongings being planted at the scene of the crime, he was hunted down by some kind of light aircraft and nearly killed (out in the middle of nowhere, when the only 'thing' that knew where he was going was Google).  Looking at that damning pile of evidence how can HP continue to shut his eyes and stick his head in the sand?  The Game is a giant, multi-country, multi-million (maybe even multi-billion) dollar business with its fingers in a lot of different pies.  It has people available to hire for all kinds of jobs - no job is too big or too small - bank robbery, intimidation, arson, grand theft auto, impersonation, even assassination.  Whatever you need they'll handle it, as long as you can pay.  I believe it and no one's tried to mow me down with light aircraft today.  To be continued...

Even later that night (actually, really early the next morning) - All through the last few chapters I've been making snarky comments at HP's idiotic response to the events going on around him.  If I was an updater and had the laptop handy (currently sitting up in bed, reading, which is where I do my best reading) I would be sniping at that idiot with every other sentence.  He just saw the

news and I was like "Are you scared now?  Do you now understand that The Game is dangerous?  Yes, you fool,

Do you still think he's crazy, or is what he said starting to make a bit more sense?"  I also said "Duh!" a lot and rolled my eyes frequently.  I just want to say a blanket "DUH!!!" to all the conclusions HP is finally coming to (the same ones I came to about 200 pages ago).  Everything he thinks is stupid and it seems to be making me stupid because the only word I can come up with as I read is "Duh".  So, I hope if I throw out a giant blanket of "Duh" it'll be out of my system and I'll go back to my normal level of intelligence when writing reviews (above average, if I can say that without sounding boastful).

Only a few pages later - After that "Duh" dump intelligence immediately came flooding back, prompting me to wonder if

Page 221 - "...perfectly ordinary office building..." well what the hell did you think it was going to be?  A casino with "Play The Game here!" in neon lights?  They're trying to be inconspicuous, so it's not likely they would want records of anything to do with the real business that goes on inside showing up on a Google search.  If I was going to hide The Game's head offices I would go with a medical supply warehouse that really does hold and ship out medical supplies, at least that's what you'd see if you went in the front door; but if you went round the back you would find banks of computers with people tracking bets, jobs for players, player payments, etc.  If you're going to have a front for an illegal operation you need to have something real, not something that just looks good on paper.  When the inspectors show up (and they will, they always do) you can show them that you are exactly what your tax return says you are - a medical supply warehouse.  To be continued...

24/3 - Only 65 pages to go, I'm definitely gonna to finish this tonight! Yay! I can't wait to see how it all ends, except it's not really ending because Game is only the first book in a trilogy. So really, I should be saying, I can't wait to see what questions are left unanswered, if there's a heart-pounding cliff-hanger where we're not sure if someone will live or die. One thing I am very curious about is the identity of the person/s leaving notes in Rebecca's locker at work and now calling her home phone, letting the answering machine pick up, but not leaving a message. Leaving Rebecca to come home to numerous messages that all turn out to be hang-ups. Almost as creepy as hang-ups or mouth-breathers in the middle of night. I hope we get further clues about that mystery before the end of the book. I'm getting a little tired of HP's voice with all his excuses for why he still wants to continue playing The Game, despite the damage it's done to his friend's and family's lives (selfish fool), so Rebecca's become much more interesting and sympathetic to listen to. To be continued...

Later that night - Great ending, very edge-of-your-seat reading (although there was no real cliff-hanger of is he/she going to live or die). The mystery behind the notes and the work day hang-ups was solved and you'll never guess how it comes out (I'm the queen of wild theories and this one didn't even cross my mind). The final twist in the tale (I love it when that happens, a shocker is revealed in the last sentences of the book, like in Scream 4, the one with Emma Roberts, I had no idea who the real killer was until they were revealed and I actually said "Oh! They're the one?!" out loud in the cinema, to the embarrassed horror of my friends). Can't WAIT for the next book to be available at the library.<!--["br"]--><!--["br"]--><!--["br"]--><!--["br"]--><!--["br"]--><!--["br"]--><!--["br"]--><!--["br"]--><!--["br"]--><!--["br"]--><!--["br"]--><!--["br"]--><!--["br"]--><!--["br"]--><!--["br"]--><!--["br"]--><!--["br"]--><!--["br"]--><!--["br"]--><!--["br"]--><!--["br"]--><!--["br"]-->

28/07 - This was even better than Wake! Watch wasn't quite as chock-a-block with techno-speak because the technology (Caitlin's eyePod, WebMind's appearance etc) had already been set up, so Sawyer didn't have to overload the reader with background information on how it all worked. This left more time for the story to happen, to progress. Webmind's voice was a little irritating to begin with because after reading everything the Gutenberg Project had digitalised he had a slightly skewed idea of the way people talk in current times, but as he continued to learn that resolved itself. The front cover had a quote from Publisher's Weekly "wildly thought provoking" and I absolutely agree. I don't understand the internet well enough to say whether any of this is possible, but I hope it is. So, if there's a WebMind-like - WebMind-like in that it's completely benign and not going to turn into Skynet or plug us all into the Matrix so it can have the planet to itself and its progeny (or whatever you call robots made by robots) - entity out there watching us from the internet please find a suitable Caitlin substitute (someone who isn't going to inform the relevant authorities out of fear of what it may one day be capable of) and make contact. I look forward to hearing from you.