What Reading Level Is Minecraft the Island
Minecraft the Island
Okay, let'due south get this out of the fashion right from the showtime. The Island, the new book by Max Brooks (yeah, the guy who wrote World War Z, the very good zombie book that got turned into that not-very-good Brad Pitt movie) is near Minecraft. The video game Minecraft.
And non a nonfiction book about the creation of Minecraft and its bear on on society. Not a guide to playing Minecraft (although, in a weird way, it kind of is). It's a novel, set in the Minecraft universe.
I think it's of import to say that, because correct upwardly until I opened it, I kinda didn't believe that's what it was going to be. I don't know why. Brooks has washed all kinds of things in his career (novels, nonfiction, G.I. Joe comics, a direct-faced guide to surviving the zombie apocalypse). But for some reason, I just didn't believe he'd go all in and make The Island what it is — an officially sanctioned story nearly a person (nameless) who somehow (never explained) ends upwardly within a globe that works by the rules of Minecraft. Ends upwards in the game, for lack of a more artful way to put it — an exhausted trope that has existed since Tron. Since the dawn of video games.
But across that, The Island is 1 of four things, depending on who's reading it. If you're a grumpy developed, devoid of imagination, who picked this volume upwardly just considering you recognized Max Brooks' proper noun on the cover, it's a massive piece of fan fiction written past i of the nearly famous authors on the scene. It'southward fun, in its mode, just y'all're gonna get bored (or annoyed, or both) very quickly.
If you're a weird book critic who (possibly, sometimes) reads WAY too much into things, The Isle is a fascinating experiment in worldbuilding and storytelling. To come across an author like Brooks forced to work within the strictures of a universe that literally makes no physical sense — where fifty-fifty something as basic every bit eating comes with its own set of rules that are fundamentally nonsensical and different than ours here on Earth Prime number — is to run across all the spokes and gears of craft exposed. I liked the thing purely as a chief'south thesis on internal consistency in genre literature.
If you're a child — a Minecraft freak, or perhaps just someone who's curious and likes a good story — it's a rollicking adventure yarn; Robinson Crusoe for the digital historic period. You actually don't even have to know annihilation nearly the game to like information technology. Everything's laid out for you on the page, from the odd physics to the creepers. Plus, there are exploding cows and poop jokes so, you lot know, good fun.
And finally, if you're a parent considering whether or non this is appropriate summer reading material for the pint-sized nerds in your life, you should know that the entire thing is structured as a clever series of life lessons, couched in language and an environment that will arrive more than palatable to children who maybe don't like beingness lectured at for 200-some like shooting fish in a barrel-reading pages.
This last is what I remember Brooks wanted information technology to be. Most capacity start with a flake of sage (if wide) wisdom like "Panic Drowns Thought" or "Take Care Of Your Surroundings So It Can Take Care Of You lot." The text then goes on to show this aphorism in action. "Take Life In Steps" is about planning before doing. "Everything Has A Price" becomes a discussion of the moral cost of killing animals for nutrient. And at the end of the volume, Brooks includes a listing of life lessons he learned while playing Minecraft, just in case you missed what he was doing.
Just the kids reading it? They're non gonna notice, or not correct away, anyhow. Brooks hides the medicine pretty well, and the pages zip forth from action to complexity to solution all in a fog of video game weirdness. It begins with the unnamed protagonist waking in the ocean, and swimming to a deserted isle that operates by the clunky, cubist physics of the Minecraft world. The protagonist doesn't understand how this happened. He understands none of the rules of this place, and must discover its laws and limitations through trial and error.
The twist here? The protagonist is very much human. Comes from our world, and reacts in a believable (if elementary) way to being dropped into a universe where different physical laws utilize. He experiences fear and anxiety and triumph. He befriends a cow and some sheep. He fights for his life and, by the finish of things, emerges wiser and better prepared for moving on. It is the Hero's Journeying, Pocket Edition. A ane-human being Illiad.
And it even has some zombies in it. Because it just wouldn't be a Max Brooks book without them.
Jason Sheehan knows stuff about food, video games, books and Starblazers. He is currently the restaurant critic at Philadelphia magazine, only when no one is looking, he spends his time writing books nigh behemothic robots and ray guns. Tales From the Radiation Age is his latest book.
Source: https://www.npr.org/2017/07/22/536892650/life-lessons-with-zombies-in-minecraft-the-island
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