Minecraft: The Island: An Official Minecraft Novel

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As surprised as I am to admit it, Minecraft: The Island ended up being very good. Much of the enjoyment came from listening to the audiobook, I am sure (which I will go into later), but I was overall quite impressed with how the author managed to dramatize the new player experience, making even the most mundane tasks feel like a race against time. Brooks also did a great job capturing the spirit of the game, perfectly portraying that giddy sense of excitement whenever you make a new discovery, or even that satisfying feeling of accomplishment when you survive your first night without being killed by a zombie.

Ebook ISBN 9780399181788 randomhousebooks.com Book design by Elizabeth A. D. Eno, adapted for ebook Cover art and design: Ian Wilding v4.1 ep How do you make a novel out of a world where there are no characters, no motives beyond keeping busy, and no peril that lasts longer than a single night? How can you structure a story in a way that builds up and pays off? And how can you depict such a singular game-world in a way that's compelling for people who've already played the game, and coherent for people who haven't? The answer to all of these questions is that you can't. The story is narrated by the player character, who wakes up in Minecraft one day with no idea what any of it is or means, and follows his stream of consciousness ramblings as he works out the mechanics of the world, has periodic existential crises, and imparts the most uninspiring life lessons ever put in a book. The unnamed 'character' has an existential crisis, struggling to come to terms with the strange cubular world they've found themselves in, and this is surprisingly compelling - but unfortunately it gets dropped within the first few chapters.Minecraft: The Island" is a book filled with experience. It shows how fast a 'modern' human can live on his own in a 'semi-virtual world' that is Minecraft. The author is the same person who made WWZ and has amazing writing techniques. His writing techniques really fit into the theme of the book and is one of the best, if not the best Minecraft book ever.

Prose was OK. There was a single POV. The author has traditionally used an informal, style. That continues here, although it’s obvious he’s using a simpler more straightforward narration than in previous books. There was almost no dialog, given the story’s Robinson Crusoe-like premise. The protagonist’s inner narrative could be amusing at times, although I felt he was too pious. Descriptions are very detailed in the beginning. The book was a Primer on aspects of the game. However, the descriptions become less detailed as the story gets long. Action sequences were good, although not too complicated. Pacing was fine throughout. Alex: Sobering stuff! But when they get together, we realize their two personalities work together well. Confidence vanished as I raced out of the woods. How long did I have before the night terrors rose again? How long before they hunted me down? I talked with Max about how he found a great story in the clash of Guy and Summer’s personalities, and why that story is important in our pandemic-ridden times. But I had to first ask about what in the Overworld Guy is thinking when he decides to set out on his boat at the start of the book.For a story based on a desert island scenario, the tone of the narrative was also much more enthusiastic and upbeat than I expected. Thanks to unconventional personalities like Moo the cow and other barnyard animals that our protagonist befriends (hey, it sure beats talking to an inanimate volleyball), we avoid the usual problems involving loneliness and tedium. As this book is geared towards children and young adults, the humor we get is light and clean, though I’m also confident that readers of all ages will be able to appreciate the story’s universal themes. The table of contents, which ostensibly reads like a list of guidelines to help you succeed in Minecraft, show chapter headings like “Never Give Up”, “Details Make The Difference”, “Take Life In Steps”, “Take Care of Your Environment So It Can Take Care Of You”, “It’s Not Failure That Matters, But How You Recover”, or “Books Make the World Better”—all good lessons that can be applied to the real world, no matter how old you are. Yoto says: The first official Minecraft novel! Explore forests, loot tunnels and defeat undead mobs in a mysterious new world.

Full disclosure—I am both a fan of the author and of Mincraft. In addition, I normally eschew Children’s popular literature. Max Brooks: Guy has to think and then talk through everything, and Summer is a do-er. She rushes in where angels fear to tread. I think a lot of that comes from the biome she spawned in. Guy had this island, this safe space where he had time to think and talk it out, whereas Summer spawned in the taiga, this frozen wasteland. This was the early version of the taiga, when there was almost no food, and she was freezing all the time, living on zombie flesh, and mobs came at night from every direction, so she had to fight for her life. I think it helped shape her, and so when confronted by a problem, Summer is more likely to jump in and then deal with the consequences, as opposed to Guy, who’d take a couple of days, maybe a week, to look at all the angles. Max Brooks: Research is very important to me in everything I do. I don’t write that many books because I have to spend years researching. With something like Minecraft, I live under the fear of someone saying, “That would never happen!” So I played thousands of hours of Minecraft, making sure the physics of the game work in the book. Plus, there are certain things that just happen in Minecraft that you could never think of on your own. In The Island, my character shoots his last arrow at a creeper and hits a bat that happens to fly by. That really happened when I was playing Minecraft! My original Minecraft: The Island audiobook review and many others can be found at Audiobook Reviewer.

One of the strengths of the book, was that in the beginning it was good Primer on 'how to' for the game. However, toward the end, the author lost this reader. I found myself scratching my head a few times, “How did he do that?” A major example of this was once the protagonist starting building Redstone devices. In the game, once you start building devices with Redstone, its like going from working with bear skins and stone knives to nuclear fusion. The protagonist effortlessly makes this jump. When I played the game, I found it to be one of the most difficult parts of the game to master. Alex: As a book writer, you must be used to working alone. Did you draw on your own experience for The Mountain ?