
Price: £7.99
Publisher: Nosy Crow Ltd
Genre:
Age Range: 10-14 Middle/Secondary
Length: 208pp
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Escape Room Game Zero
This prolific and successful author now comes up with yet another good story where young Eden finds herself trapped in a developing new videogame already being played by Ted, a boy her own age. Initially dismissing her presence as a mere NPC (Non Player Character) Ted is gradually won over when Eden starts solving the problems facing them in their quest to finish the game still alive. And for this to happen there remains a long way to go, with Eden never sure why she is there at all.
Short chapters, mostly ending on yet another dangerous moment, help make this story stay alive as it steams ahead to its final show-down. So much, so good, but for readers sensitive to the English language there is one persistent drawback. Almost every noun, however strong in itself, is relentlessly qualified by a preceding adjective. Verbs too are rarely allowed to make their case without the over-anxious accompaniment of an often redundant adverb. Clichés are never far away either: both sunlight and a glade are ‘dappled’ on page 48, and later on the sun is described as a ‘glowing globe’ twice in three pages. Young readers still struggling to develop their own writing styles will not be helped by this sort of example.
Minimally illustrated with black and white chapter opener pencil drawings by David Dean, the publishers also supply an accompanying soundtrack play list accessible with a mobile phone. The story ends with a beautiful poem by Emily Dickinson, where every word makes its case in the most minimal of texts. Should the author follow this example in his future writing, his extraordinarily vivid imagination would surely continue to come up with more excellent plots but now with a much sparer vocabulary to match.