FantasticLand

A Novel

De: Mike Bockoven

Narrado por: Angela Dawe, Luke Daniels

Since the 1970s, FantasticLand has been the theme park where "Fun is Guaranteed!" But when a hurricane ravages the Florida coast and isolates the park, the employees find it anything but fun. Five weeks later, the authorities who rescue the survivors encounter a scene of horror. Photos soon emerge online of heads on spikes outside of rides and viscera and human bones littering the gift shops, breaking records for hits, views, likes, clicks, and shares. How could a group of survivors, mostly teenagers, commit such terrible acts?

Presented as a fact-finding investigation and a series of first-person interviews, FantasticLand pieces together the grisly series of events. Park policy was that the mostly college-aged employees surrender their electronic devices to preserve the authenticity of the FantasticLand experience. Cut off from the world and left on their own, the teenagers soon form rival tribes who viciously compete for food, medicine, social dominance, and even human flesh. This new social network divides the ravaged dreamland into territories ruled by the Pirates, the ShopGirls, the Freaks, and the Mole People. If meticulously curated online personas can replace private identities, what takes over when those constructs are lost?

FantasticLand is a modern take on Lord of the Flies meets Battle Royale that probes the consequences of a social civilization built online.

©2016 Mike Bockoven (P)2017 Brilliance Publishing, Inc., all rights reserved.

a scarily thoughtful illustration

This book is a series of 20-something interviews conducted by a journalist after a load of young adults go Lord of the Flies in a theme park after being trapped by a hurricane. The interviews are not only with survivors who were in the park but with management staff who left before the hurricane struck, the park's owner and some of the military and police who were first in there during the rescue.

Each 'interview' gives a wide view of what went on, with some overlap between some of the stories but overall it gives you a HUGE view of what went on from a variety of different perspectives. The beauty of this being that you get a whole range of different ideas as to why people would behave in this way - the story itself is pretty simple, the staff split off into groups when they realised they were trapped and then turned on each other. This book considers how little it would take to push even the most civilised human beings into killing each other off, given the right set of circumstances.

It has some moments of goriness, but this book is a scarily thoughtful illustration of that 'right set of circumstances' so you feel yourself being swept up in the panic and violence.

There aren't the words to do justice for the narration of this audiobook - Angela Dawe and Luke Daniels turn this already wonderful book into a performance to be remembered. Each 'interviewee' has their own distinctive voice and characterisation, bearing in mind there are more than 20 characters to be split between them - this is no mean feat.
You can really believe that these are all different people giving an account of their experiences, also making it easy to split into sections to listen to during commutes etc. (I totally didn't do that, I spent all of Sunday afternoon cleaning out kitchen cupboards just so I could keep listening to it).

I am so enthusiastic about this audio that I see myself recommending it to all my friends for weeks to come, not just forcing my other half to listen to some of the gorier bits.

Audiobook was purchased for review by ABR

Please find this complete review and many others at my review blog.

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Fantastic!

If LORD OF THE FLIES was set in a flooded amusement park, it would be FANTASTICLAND.

I loved everything about this audiobook! Both of the narrators were excellent, which is good because each one of them voiced many characters throughout the tale. The story was told via a series of interviews that happened well after the fact. The reader is left to pull it all together in their mind. These narrators were so excellent, they sounded like entirely different people from interview to interview.

It's very scary to think about today's youth and/or young adults. They have to have something to amuse themselves every second of the day, it seems like. Cut off from phones and the internet, they are left with nothing to do and it turns out, there's nothing scarier than a group of bored teens.

The story was excellent, the narrators were excellent and I cannot wait to read more from this author!

My highest recommendation!

*I bought this ebook AND the audiobook with my hard earned cash.*

Suspend Your Disbelief

Very fun listening experience if you go into it not taking the story overly serious. The voice acting is great!

Fun is guaranteed!

This was such a fun read! It is obviously a modern take on Lord of The Flies. The book is set in a Disney World-esque theme park after a devastating hurricane hits, leaving a skeleton crew of (mostly) teenagers in the park. In a short time, the kids divide into "tribes" based off of where they worked (e.g. pirate cove employees= pirates). It is pretty gory/graphic, but I really enjoyed the story and how it was presented (in a series of interviews with local news, police, and park employees). I would definitely recommend for fans of: Lord of the Flies, World War Z, or Hunger Games.

A book like this

Is exactly the kind of book I want from Audible. Non stop pleasure, horror, humor, and delightful acts of force majeure.

A great visual through vocals

I really enjoyed how the actors made me feel when listening to the characters' stories. They each sounded diverse and made me feel like I was with the characters throughout their experience.

Fantasticland is truly fantastic!

I got this book for free from Audible's new "Plus" program. I saw someone comparing it to Battle Royale (the book, not the comic) and I thought why not try it. I ADORED Battle Royale and was pleasantly surprised to feel the same way about this book. Really, really good. And fantastic on audio!

Glad I took a chance on this.

I still think about things from this book from time to time, that is something very few modern books can do for me. I loved the interview format and the voice actors did a great job trying to keep it realistic with ticks and things like that. Great job
Edit:
I just bought this again because I couldn’t stop thinking about it, seriously this book is great.

When it ended, I started the book over again.

If you liked the narrative style of Rant by Chuck P, or World War Z by Max Brooks, you'll enjoy the story AND the performances of this book.

If you liked the devolution of civilization in Lord of The Flies or those early seasons of The Walking Dead, (the battles between groups, not the zombie stuff), you'll enjoy this story.

If you ever worked at a theme park, (I worked at Six Flags Over GA in the eighties) you might find a delightfully sick thrill from reading this book.

This might be my new favorite book, and new favorite author. I'm looking forward to his next book, ("Pack") coming out this July.

Very Well Done

I really enjoyed the format of this, as told via interviews. All the various voices were well done, almost like listening to 20 different readers. Both creepy, dark, and fun.