OUR FUTURE IS UNWRITTEN. OUR FUTURE IS YOUR FUTURE. WHAT WILL BE WILL BE. PEOPLE OF EARTH. ENDGAME HAS BEGUN.

Seriously. It's maddening to hear people say it's like the THG series when in fact, IT'S NOT!!!!!!!

James Frey and Nils Johnson-Shelton's introduction already captured my heart. A very powerful intro. After reading the lines, my heart is just filled with excitement. I keep on looking forward to what will happen. Though in the beginning it kinda confused me because it's been one player's POV then another one then another one. But as the story progresses, I got used to it and it became my favorite idea that every POV takes you to different settings. And it's like travelling also. Skills for the players i really fascinating and frightening at the same time coz some players are so bad-ass and brutal. I wince on parts that grossed me. I can't imagine that happening to me. And then some of the players paired up and that makes the difference.

I'm so hooked with the this and I believe I could finish this in two days if not only of working days. but still, i love the book and those who says it's kinda like THG, you must read again!

Read this review and more on my blog October Tune!

When I first heard about Endgame: The Calling I was curious. A book with an actual scavenger hunt hidden inside? That should be awesome right? Well, no. Because when I started reading the book, I was annoyed right from the start. And even though I told myself I would read at least half of a book before deciding to DNF it, I didn't even make it to 25% with this one.

First of all, the main thing that annoyed me was the fact that there were SO. MANY. POV'S. There were twelve players, and though I didn't get to read all of their POV's, reading from five or six of them was annoying already. The authors did have a favourite one, American sweetheart Sarah. Obviously. A whole book full of diverse characters from all over the world, and they choose the white American girl. (Honestly, I don't care what skincolour the characters have (nor do I care about their sexual orientation). I just want good characters who do awesome things, and if they are black or white or brown doesn't matter to me, as long as they are written well). But in this book, none of the characters were written well.

Then there was the fact that everything was described in detail. Like, a character would be wearing a suit, just a simple suit, but the author would describe in detail what it was made of, what colour it was, what the ring on his left hand looked like and what colour the stones were on that ring. Yes, I do like it when things are described, but sometimes it just took so long for a character to be described that I just gave up and skimmed the whole thing. It was very frustrating in this book. (Just like it was frustrating in Lord of the Rings, but then again LOTR had an interesting story to tell, and I didn't really feel like that with Endgame).

And just the way the book was written was annoying to me too. Such short sentences, so many periods, and there was one character who had weird tics and blinkblink the author blinkblinkshiver the the author shiverblinkshiver would write shivershiver all the sentences blinkblinkblink like this and blinkblinkblink sometimes shivershiver sometimes he would blinkshiverblinkshiver repeat words blinkblinkshiver. I just got SO EFFING FRUSTRATED BECAUSE OF THAT. And ever time the authors started a new sentence that involved the character doing or thinking something, it would be like: "Sarah sat down. Sarah loved sitting down. Sarah thought she could probably sit down for the rest of the day. Sarah this. Sarah that. Sarah why do all sentences start with your name?" You know. It was just annoying, I know it's Sarah who does all those things, seriously what's wrong with using 'she/he' sometimes.

A lot of people are already tired of hearing this, but I've got to say it: Yes it did remind me of the Hunger Games a bit. But it was also different; because of course in THG the tributes aren't allowed to leave the arena, and Endgame happened all over the world. There were clues the Players had to solve instead of just mindlessly killing each other (though that did happen). But yeah, I just thought of the Hunger Games while reading it. Sorry for those who are done with everyone comparing the two books, but hey it's just my opinion.

In the end, I disliked Endgame a lot. So much even that I gave it just one star, which I've only done to two books I've read so far (City of Glass and one of the Grimm Diary Prequel novella's). So congratulations Endgame, on becoming the third one-star rated book on my Read shelf! Now get out of my face.

My opinion on this book in one gif:


(gif credit)

Sigue hacia abajo para encontrar la reseña en español.

I got this review copy from NetGalley.

This is not a bad book and I liked it much more than I thought while I was reading it after I finished it, but it’s a bit weird and slow at first, because a lot of the things that the characters know are not explained. This is the first book of a trilogy, so I hope that the other two will move faster, as everything that the characters know is revealed by the end of this book. I suppose that the secrets of Endgame, the "game" that the characters are playing, will be revealed in the next two books. The Calling is just the search for the first key and there are three keys in the game, so there’s still room for many surprises.

It’s not that the first half of the book is boring, but nothing happens and there are many characters, who are more or less main characters. Each chapter is the point of view of one (or more than one) of them, so some of the chapters are sometimes things that happen at the same time, but in different places, which can make this first part a bit tiresome.

Endgame gets much better at the end, when we finally know what’s going on, or rather almost everything, because there are clues that suggest that everything is not as all those who trained for Endgame think. Before I started this book I had read a few reviews that compared it to The Hunger Games. Even though I can see why, I don’t think that they’re that similar. It’s true that there are twelve people and that they’re taking part in a deadly game where there can only be one winner, but everything else is very different. Even the circumstances that lead to this game (and the game itself) have nothing to do with The Hunger Games. If I had to compare this series with another, it would be 39 Clues, as it’s a race to find something (in the case of Endgame this something are three keys), but much more brutal and with bigger consequences for humanity.

Something that I found interesting is that there isn’t a clear main character until after half the book is over. You can guess who they’re going to be, because of the number of chapters about them, but it’s something that can change at any moment until you reach the end of the book.

The only thing that disappointed me a bit is that I had worked out where the first key was going to be a while before the characters did. Seeing as there had been so many clues that lead to other clues, I had been hoping for a sudden plot twist, but this didn’t happen. There is one at the very end of the book that left me looking forward to reading the next book of this series though.

3,5 stars

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Este libro no está mal y al final me gustó más de lo que esperaba según iba leyendo, pero es un poco raro y lento al principio, porque no se explican muchas cosas que los protagonistas sí conocen. Es el primer libro de una trilogía, así que espero que los otros dos avancen un poco más rápido, ya que al final del primer libro se ha revelado lo que saben los personajes. Supongo que en los dos siguientes se irán revelando todos los demás secretos de Endgame, el "juego" en el que participan los personajes de esta novela. La Llamada es sólo la búsqueda de la primera llave y hay tres llaves en el juego, así que todavía queda espacio para muchas sorpresas.

La primera mitad del libro no es que sea aburrida, pero no pasa mucho y hay muchos personajes más o menos principales. Cada capítulo es el punto de vista de uno (o más de uno) de ellos, así que a veces varios capítulos son cosas que suceden al mismo tiempo, pero en sitios distintos, lo que puede llegar a hacer esta primera parte un poco pesada.

Endgame mejora mucho al final, cuando por fin se sabe de qué va todo o más bien casi todo, porque hay pistas que sugieren que las cosas no son como han creído todos los que se han entrenado para Endgame. Antes de empezar a leer el libro había leído algunas reseñas que lo comparaban con Los Juegos del Hambre. Aunque veo el porqué de la comparación, no creo que se parezca tanto. Es cierto que hay doce chicos y que están metidos en un juego mortal del que sólo uno puede resultar vencedor, pero todo lo demás es muy distinto. Incluso las circunstancias que llevan a ese juego (y el juego en sí) no tienen nada que ver con Los Juegos del Hambre. Si tuviera que compararlo con otra saga sería con 39 Clues, ya que se trata de una carrera por encontrar algo (en el caso de Endgame ese algo son tres llaves), pero mucho más bestia y con consecuencias mucho mayores para la humanidad.

Algo que me pareció interesante es que hasta pasada la mitad no hay un claro personaje principal. Se puede sospechar quiénes van a ser por el número de capítulos dedicados a ellos, pero hasta que no se llega al final del libro, es algo que puede cambiar en cualquier momento.

Lo único que realmente me decepcionó un poco es que había deducido dónde iba a estar la primera llave mucho antes de que lo hicieran los personajes. Teniendo en cuenta que había habido tantas pistas que llevaron a otras pistas, había estado esperando que hubiera algún giro súbito, pero no fue así. Sin embargo, sí que hay uno justo al final del libro que me ha dejado deseando leer el siguiente libro de esta serie.

3,5 estrellas

 

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The sample of Endgame I read, intrigued me enough to want to read the rest. You can read my initial thoughts after reading the sample chapters here: My Review of Endgame - sample Unfortunately the rest of the book doesn't live up to my initial expectations.

It continues its multi character approach and certainly delivers on action and violence. Given the characters' young ages, I found this disturbing.

Interestingly, instead of working in isolation many of the players teamed up. This realistic touch emphasised the players' humanity.

The story is punctuated with number sequences and pictures. I presume these relate to the game, which accompanies the book. I ignored these and reviewed the characters and story. The drawings and pictures would be better in the hardcover version. I read an electronic ARC.

The end of 'The Calling' throws up more questions than answers. I'm not sure I care enough about the characters to find out what happens. However I am not the intended audience and if you are a fan of fantasy computer games and dystopian adventure this may be for you.

I received a copy of this book from Harper Collins UK Children via NetGalley in return for an honest review.




 

“The Calling” is the first book of James Frey’s Endgame Trilogy. I had heard of this book briefly before I saw it in a book store. What I liked about the hardcover version was the codes and pictures in the book. It looked interesting and the synopsis sounded quite interesting, too.

 

Unfortunately, I did not remember that Frey also wrote “I am Number Four”, a book I read a few years ago and did not like too much. There is a lot of controversy about Frey which I remembered when I listened to the audiobook. I am not going into any details but one of the things Frey gets accused of is, that he writes his books in a way that they would make a great movie and get movie deals. And that is something I noticed in “I am Number Four” (even before I heard anything about Frey) and in “The Calling”.

 

The basic idea for the book is great but the execution is poorly done. The story makes no sense so many times. Basically, the story is about 12 players from 12 different bloodlines who have to play this Endgame. In the end only one player will survive and only people from his bloodline will survive with him. Unfortunately the story sounds more interesting than it is. Especially since things did not add up. Players die in this book but the people from their bloodlines do not get extinct like it was told (or does that only happen at the very end of the trilogy?).

 

I also did not understand the inconsistency of the players: one moment the players are trying to kill each other for no reason and in the next they are madly in love or best friends. Just, WHAT?! It seemed like many fighting scenes were just there because they would look awesome in a movie. And of course there had to be a love triangle. Every YA book has a love triangle at the moment, so Frey’s book needed a love triangle as well. But that made no sense at all since two people involved hardly knew each other and were supposed to kill each other.

 

And let us not even talk about the characters. I could not connect to a single character in this book and this book has many to choose from. In “The Calling” we have main characters from all over the world but Frey could not leave his comfort zone behind and so it is the American girl that is oh so perfect. She does not even want to participate but naturally accomplishes everything.

 

All in all, this book did not impress me much. I am not even sure I would have finished it if I had read it as a book. Uve Teschner tried his best reading this book but at times his enthusiasm for the action scenes made it even worse. I cannot recommend this book and I am pretty sure that I will not pick up the sequel. I think James Frey is officially an author I will not read in the future.