Item: FantasticLand
Rating: 4.00
Author: ibeforem

by Mike Bockoven

Ideal for fans of Lord of the Flies and Battle Royale
A gripping thriller in which an amusement park becomes the scene of a real-life nightmare
Written as an investigation with first-person interviews

When online personas take the place of private identities, what happens when those societal constructs disappear? The employees of FantasticLand find out after a hurricane hits the Florida coast. FantasticLand has been the theme park where “Fun Is Guaranteed!” for nearly forty years. After the hurricane, detectives and others who make it to the survivors more than a month later discover a scene out of a nightmare. Evidence of grisly murders are all over the park. Yet the only ones who could have committed these savage and horrible acts were the college-aged employees. What drove them to such violence?

According to park policy, employees gave up their electronic devices to make FantasticLand more authentic. When the hurricane hit and they were left to their own devices, the teens split into rival tribes. To survive, they compete for social dominance, medicine, human flesh, and food.

Fans of thrillers and murder mysteries will love FantasticLand: A Novel.

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This book was crazy, and I'm really glad I read it *after* I went to DisneyWorld, because it would have significantly altered how I look at the park if I've read it before...

FantasticLand is a Disney/Universal-esque park near Daytona Beach, Florida, and it's in the path of the largest, fastest moving hurricane that's ever existed. But that's okay, because they have an emergency plan! A volunteer group of employees, most of them college-aged, will ride out the storm in an underground bunker, only to emerge and get the park back into working order as soon as possible.

At least, that was the plan. But the storm is much worse than anyone planned, and help is much slower in coming. And what happens in the wake of the storm is part Lord of the Flies, part Hunger Games, part Survivor, and entirely horrifying.

The format of the book gives it a feeling of intimacy. Each chapter is an interview with a survivor, and through their stories we try to piece together the truth of what happened in the park. I listened to the audio version of the book and found this format especially effective. The two voice actors did a really great job.

I only deduct a star because there was at least one minor plot line that I thought was extraneous. There was enough bad stuff going on without the specter of a possible serial killer hanging out there. Otherwise, this was a really solid novel, and it will forever alter how I look at theme parks and the people who work there.

FantasticLand

by Mike Bockoven

Reviewed by ibeforem on Sep 26, 2018

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