Reviewed by Nessa Luna on
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)
Reading updates
- Started reading
- 21 January, 2015: Finished reading
- 21 January, 2015: Reviewed