Review: Conflicted, yet eager for the second installment
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 01 24, 2013
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.