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Maybe you think that the big "Games" event today is the premier of the Hunger Games movie. You'd be wrong. The big event that you should be anticipating is when you buy/borrow/download Ted Kosmatka's amazing new book, The Games.
I'll admit that The Hunger Games movie looks pretty cool. I can testify that the movie is a big deal among the 7th and 9th grade crowd, as both my offspring have read the book and will be at movie premier (sans parents, with friends). The Hunger Games book is pretty much un-put-downable, although I've only made the acquaintance of the first installment of the trilogy.
Of the two "Games" books, I'd take Kosmatka's. (Although some of my friends swear by the 3rd "game" series of books …. A Game of Thrones … but I think I'll wait for the HBO version to arrive from Netflix).
The Games has all the ingredients that technology and future minded folks will enjoy.
- A futuristic Olympic gladiator competition in which the only rule is that the competitors cannot have any human DNA, but all other genetic and drug manipulation is fair game.
- A genetically engineered super-predator (The Gladiator), created by the world's largest (and most power hungry) supercomputer.
- A mad genius computer designer, a conflicted genius genetic engineer, a corrupt and powerful Olympic official, and a beautiful Brazilian xenobiologist.
Kosmatka infuses his dystopic Olympic future with smart and fully developed characters and lots of good descriptions of genetic engineering (for the DNA/RNA fans amongst us). The science never gets in the way of the narrative (this is a page turner - or whatever the equivalent of a page turner is for an audiobook), but the geeks amongst us appreciate Kosmatka's level of genetic and technological fluency.
I've heard The Games compared to the best of the Michael Crichton oeuvre. And I'm not too proud to say that I was a big Crichton fan back in the day. I predict that Ted Kosmatka will become our next franchise writer, and the eventual movie version of The Game will be a big event.
What are you reading?
