Author: Paityn Parque
Published: August 11th, 2021
Summary:
Death is not an escape.
One night Ezra Adkins is brutally murdered in her own home. As she was dying, she expects to wake up in the afterworld.
She was wrong.
She loses consciousness and awakens into a horrific game of kill or be killed. Players can be killed an infinite number of times, but the only permanent way out of the game is their actual death by suicide.
Players in the game ruthlessly hunt each other for points, while others kill for fun. Most players have given up on finding an escape from the game and spiral into insanity, killing without reason.
It’s mayhem.
Ezra soon learns who to trust and who to hunt down. But as she falls deeper into the game, she starts to lose herself as the bodies pile up. The line blurs between what she’s always known to be right and wrong.
Metal will clash. Blood will spill. Minds will break. And before it’s too late, Ezra must find an escape from the game before she becomes the real enemy.
Review:
Let me first say, Paityn is 15 years old and wrote a whole book with 301 pages! That alone is super impressive.
I was very intrigued after reading the summary; it reminded me of a mix between Hunger Games and Sword Art Online. We follow Ezra, who becomes trapped in a game, a game she never signed up for. The rules are simple; you level up by surviving and killing others; the people you kill will not permanently die but respawn somewhere else. However, if you decide to kill yourself, you will permanently die. The only way to get out of the game alive is to kill people, gain blood points, and buy your way out.
Our main character Ezra is a headstrong girl with a well-thought-out personality. I loved her character development and how she didn't seem perfect. She had flaws, and being completely new to the game and its work meant that she was also naive. She overestimated herself and her abilities and underestimated the other players, forgetting that they also had abilities. This made Ezra appear more human and realistic.
Every player has abilities, and they access them through a book. Everyone has main abilities and can unlock upgrades for the abilities, which I found very interesting and fun. The abilities were unique, so every player had their own style of fighting others.
The world Paityn created was simple and easy to understand. The world itself wasn't the main plot, and I'm glad she did not use lots of time to explain how the world looked like. She explained everything necessary and kept it at that.
Her writing style was also excellent. The way she described the characters was very natural. She described them by expressing their facial expression, adding their eye colors, jawlines, height, etc., clearly and simply. Paityn also described their personality through their emotions and how they reacted in certain situations, cleanly and. It was lots of fun to read it.
There are two reasons why I can not give this book 5 stars.
1) Dramatic scenes were over too quickly.
This book is characterized by action and dramatics. It's a world where our characters have to fight for survival, and not everyone has the right mindset to survive it. The build-ups to important events were over too quickly. Important events that scarred Ezra were over before I realized it was about to happen, something dramatic. The villain that follows us has great potential, but when we first got introduced to him, to be honest. I didn't even realize he would be our main villain.
2) The name change in the middle of the book.
The name change that happens is not my cup of tea. Someone might love it, and I am impressed by her unique way of changing the name of our main character and marking the change of her personality, but it was just not my thing.
I'm really looking forward to seeing how Paityn will grow as an author!
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