FantasticLand

3:

Everyone was singing their praises for this book and I have a free Scribd subscription so I thought, what the hell I'll give it a go. It was a spur of the moment thing, I planned on finishing it over the weekend, but I was hooked and done in a day. Boy that was wacky.

I gotta say, the audiobook performance was stellar. It's only two people narrating the whole book! It felt like a full cast kinda thing, wow. The narrators were so talented, I feel like their performance absolutely enhanced the quality of the story. They portrayed each character in such a natural, human way, with sighs and stuttering and getting choked up, they had different accents for a few of the characters, too. My god, I'd listen to it again just to drink in the storytelling.

As for the story itself, it was okay. Not perfect by any means, it had its issues. I mean, I can sort of pretend the whole 0 to 100 pace everything took to get going deal wasn't as bonkers as it was, because I remember what people were like with toilet paper at the beginning of the pandemic. It's ridiculous, but easily overlooked. And the time frame being confusing could be attributed to having a bunch of people telling their side of the story, and misremembering stuff, I suppose. What I REALLY didn't fuck with was the “aaah kids with their Facebook and their internet and their phones glued to their hands mutter mutter grumble grumble” thing that was brought up throughout the whole damn book. They seriously stated that all that shit went down because the “kids” didn't have their phones and were oh so very bored. For real? It was irritating.

However, I took this as a light (?) story that was meant only as entertainment and not as food for thought, and damn if I wasn't entertained. That one chapter, the one with the guy in the hotel? Nightmare fuel. Last night I had to convince myself to close my eyes and fall asleep, I was so scared.

There were also a lot of characters that I adored, like Jill, Sophie, and Clara, they were so badass. I liked Stu, and the guy from the hotel who's name I don't recall, and I really enjoyed Gregg's chapter, it was hilarious.

I feel like the book would've been wonderful if Mike had focused on more plot points instead of trying to pin everything on the youth's inability to think without a phone, but I'd still recommend this (the audiobook version, because I think it makes up for a lot of the issues) if you want a fun story and a quick scare. Hell, you could read the hotel chapter by itself as a stand-alone short story, it's seriously THAT good.