Endgame: The Calling had a lot of great ideas and I am definitely excited for it to become a movie hopefully soon. In this book, generations of people who are eligible between the ages of 13 and 20 train hard to be the best and to be ready for Endgame. Endgame has officially begun and 12 teenagers are participating in a competition to recover three keys in the proper order. The winner gets to live along with the people in his or her line while everyone else dies. The idea of a bunch of teenagers competing this way reminds me a bit of The Hunger Games which is one of the reason why I was pulled into reading this book. I've been in a Hunger Games mood with the last movie coming out this month.
Now, as mentioned, I loved the whole idea of the story. It's action-packed and you get to travel with the characters through countries in search of the Earth Key and all but I felt like this book was very difficult for me to feel like I'm a part of it all. To me, the structure felt a bit all over the place since you're following 12 different perspectives. My friend B thinks that if the structure was set a bit differently, he would have probably enjoyed it a little more as well. This doesn't mean that I don't like the book. I definitely see myself reading the rest of this series in the future. It just took me a while to truly grasp everything in the story. I'll be honest and say that I was around 130 pages in when I finally got all of the names right along with their descriptions. There were times where I had to go back to see who a person was again and what he or she looked like. I guess I just feel like there were too many story-lines to follow in this book. It did, however, speed up towards the middle and it had just as much action straight to the end.
In all, it was a tough read but we did like this book. All of the 12 perspectives aside, the puzzles and the action in this book were actually really cool and I recommend it to those who enjoy this style of read.
I give it a 2.5 out of 5.
B also gives it a 2.5 out of 5.
If you've read this book and want to share your opinion, please do in the comments section!
Ciao!