Title: Invitation to the Game
Author: Monica Hughes
Publish Date: June 1993
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Children's Publishing
Pages: 192pp
ISBN: 0671866923
Classification: Fiction
Genre: Science Fiction/Fantasy
Annotation: Lisse has just graduated from school and is hopelessly unemployed in a dystopian future society. When she is placed in the Designated Area with seven other friends, the government invites her and her seven unemployed roommates to play The Game.
Plot Summary: Set in a dystopian Earth, Lisse and seven other graduates are fighting for survival in the decayed city. Hearing mysterious rumors about something called The Game, the roommates anxious wait for an invitation. When they finally get summoned to The Game, they learn that this alternate world of paradise and the game in which they are playing to track down a treasure is not at all what The Game’s main purpose is about.
Personal Response: Similar to Enders Game for me, in which I highly enjoyed. Monica Hughes creates a future that is both dark and deeply realistic with the advent of technology and robots performing humanistic occupations. This forces people out of jobs and into unemployment. I thought the characters were likable as each of them displayed a trait or skill that complimented the group as a whole. Collectively, you (as the reader) could understand the selection process upon populating the new planet as life there was in it’s prehistoric phase, making it important to acquire the precise group of people. A true survival story with optimism and hope for a better future.
~Reader’s Advisory~
Themes: Things aren’t always what they seem.
Age Range: 12 and up
Subjects: Dystopia, Boarding School, Fantasy, Science Fiction, Computer Games, Survival, Over-population, Government
Similar Titles:
The Uglies series by Scott Westerfeld