This is more than just a story - codes throughout the book combine to point to a real-world location, where a real cash prize is hidden. Who will be the first to solve the code and discover the treasure?

Endgame has arrived in the form of twelve meteors falling to different places around the Earth - close to the locations of twelve Players, one from each ancient line of humans. Trained from infancy to take up the mantle of Player should Endgame ever actually arrive, these twelve ruthless killers have now been summoned to China for the start of the great Game. There can only be one winner, and the lines of the non-winners will be wiped from the Earth by the enigmatic Sky People. High stakes indeed.

This first instalment in the Endgame series has some very mixed reviews on Goodreads so far, mostly from people judging it based on the Hunger-Games-esque blurb. Yes, there are similarities to The Hunger Games, especially in the parts where the players are grouped and trying to kill each other, but the scope is so much bigger. This story is a little bit The Hunger Games, yes, but also a bit Stargate, a bit Race Around the World, and a bit Da Vinci Code.

I was a little hesitant when I first heard about the controversy surrounding the author, James Frey - the infamous creator of the Full Fathom Five production company behind the I Am Number Four series, and the subject of a partially fabricated memoir. Since I received this book for review, I thought I'd try to separate art from artist and give it a go. I'm glad I did as I rather enjoyed it!

It's quite clear that this book was written with a screenplay in mind - the action is relentless and fluid, with fight scenes choreographed in detail. That did mean that it was very difficult to put the book down and the often very short chapters help to draw you along to keep reading.

Unfortunately, those short chapters also meant that the point of view cut back and forth between characters, sometimes several times within the same scene. It can be a little jarring trying to keep track of each player's thoughts. Also, the brutality of the story and the ruthlessness of the Players themselves made me quite unsympathetic to any of them and I couldn't find myself caring about any of them in particular.

Despite the violence and apocalyptic nature of the story, I liked that it wasn't all doom and gloom - there is an undercurrent of hope about quite a few of the players, perhaps that there might be a more peaceful solution to the game, or perhaps some kind of rebellion against the Sky People and the Game. In any case, I'll be interested to see how the story develops.

I do find conspiracy theories relating to ancient sites fascinating. There are strange sites all over the world, such as various pyramids, Stonehenge, Göbekli Tepe in Turkey, of which very little is known about their origins or uses. It's fun to speculate about what may have been the origins of god-worshipping cultures around the world, although I really hope that something like Endgame doesn't end up coming to pass!

I do recommend this story for those who love an action-packed thriller with strange codes and conspiracy theories.

I think the main problem I had with Endgame is that there are way too many points of view. Twelve is just ridiculous, and the author is really just unable to handle them all adequately. Frey switches too quickly between the povs for the reader to really be able to connect with any of them, especially because the characters are so poorly developed.

The entire premise didn’t really make sense to me. I feel like things should have been explained in a bit more detail or something, because the whole “twelve lines of humanity” and each having one member to “fight” for the survival of the line? Um, whut. Please explain how, when, why.

The writing itself is pretty poor quality as well. It has a feeling of almost being more of a script than a novel- it’s very overt in stating everything, with complete disregard of the classic “show don’t tell”. The dialogue seems pretty cliched and cheesy at times, and the plot is very chaotic.

Well, shaky premise, terrible world building and poor handling of multiple points of view- I’m certainly not continuing on with this series.

The end of the world is coming and 12 teenagers determine the fate of every person on Earth as they embark on a deadly “end” game engineered by powerful godlike people who have been shaping humanity for over 10,000 years. Endgame begins ‘if the human race shows that it doesn’t deserve to be human.’

In the book there are endnotes that refer to links at the back of the book that are YouTube links and google searches to enhance the story and provide clues for the reader. It all is confusing as well as time consuming. After about 10 pages and several links I gave up and got through the story just fine. This book has already been signed with Google Niantic Labs to become a location-based augmented reality game, incorporating components from the real world to build an interactive world around the story. If that isn’t enough, Endgame: The Calling has as well as been optioned by Twentieth Century Fox for an accompanying movie series. For the launch of this book, the first in the series on October 7th, players/readers will have clues and riddles woven into the text to solve in order to discover a key to a prize. That prize is a pile of gold protected by bullet-proof glass, and is intended to be streamed as a live event on YouTube. Whilst this is all exciting and new, it seems over the top for a book that is just good.

The book for me was a savager Hunger Games, if compared to anything, with more at stake and copious amounts of mystery. I admire Frey and Johnson-Shelton for writing this book and subtly dealing with the rise of smartphones and technology and how ‘everyone’ focuses on their phones rather than what is around them. It all seems ironic. That for me was a main premise of the book, that humanity doesn’t deserve Earth anymore because they are taking it for granted, suggesting technology amongst other things started this decline in humanity not appreciating Earth enough. Yet, the book is getting made into games for smartphones, the gold case streamed live, depends on readers to have internet to search the links.

This book is definitely action packed and I was intrigued to see what happens to these 12 teenagers but I kept thinking about all the violence. Yes cool ninja moves were featured and the bad-assery of the characters emphasised, but I am on the older scale of teenagers. Many people including myself and media sites feel that it has links to The Hunger Games, which will attract young tween readers. Whilst I feel that possibly I am over thinking this too much, this book is far more violent than Hunger Games and could possibly only desensitise younger teenagers further to brutal bloody violence.

The characters progressed nicely, but there are numerous perspectives in this book and can enhance the confusion. Overall I am happy I read this and have huge admiration for all the research that must have gone in for this book to be published and would recommend this read for older teenagers if you felt that The Hunger Games was tame for you.