Minecraft: The Island: An Official Minecraft Novel

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The man wakes up lost, alone, afraid, like we all are in life. His first experiences are simply pain and fear, no one is good at first nor does everyone have a plan for life, without the vital knowledge of learning though experiences.

Be immersed in the Minecraft universe for the first time in a thrilling new adventure like no other! I actually quite enjoyed this book... to some extent. I think for a minecraft book it is done pretty well. For a regular book... maybe not. My original Minecraft: The Island audiobook review and many others can be found at Audiobook Reviewer.

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This is my home, too, and I'll carry its memories in my heart, because even if I don't find the answers I'm searching for, it's the searching that really matters." In this world, the rules don't always make sense, but courage and creativity go a long way. There are forests to explore, hidden underground tunnels to loot, and undead mobs to defeat. Only then will the secrets of the island be revealed. This was a moderately entertaining primer on Minecraft couched as a story. I could see how a 9-year old nerd-child might be enticed to read a book using the lure of their Minecraft gaming addiction. I’ve played many hours of the game, although not recently. The story kindled some very vivid memories, and I learned a few ‘better ways’ I could have done things. The author did a good job at describing the joy of Mindcraft world building. The unnamed protagonist’s battles with game zombies were as good as the author’s World War Z combats, although less graphic. Toward the end, the author was less detailed in his descriptions and it became less useful as a learning experience for the game. A large problem I had was that, the author did not make a children’s book that would be consistently entertaining to adults. This is possible by interleaving two or more levels of meaning in the narration. That wasn’t accomplished. I don't think it was attempted? Sometime after the midpoint, despite my interest in the game, the story become boring. I know GoodRead’s members who thrive on reading children’s books. Perhaps my inner child is too deeply concealed? In summary, this was moderately entertaining in the beginning due to my interest in the game's world building. However, it did not go the distance for me.

Alex: Sobering stuff! But when they get together, we realize their two personalities work together well. As surprised as I am to admit it, Minecraft: The Island ended up being very good. Much of the enjoyment came from listening to the audiobook, I am sure (which I will go into later), but I was overall quite impressed with how the author managed to dramatize the new player experience, making even the most mundane tasks feel like a race against time. Brooks also did a great job capturing the spirit of the game, perfectly portraying that giddy sense of excitement whenever you make a new discovery, or even that satisfying feeling of accomplishment when you survive your first night without being killed by a zombie. Max Brooks: That was the whole point of this book. Book one was: you’ve got to learn how to live with yourself. Book two is: you’ve got to learn to live with someone else. That makes this book timely. Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, a lot of kids are basically trapped on the islands of their homes, and they’re going to have to leave those islands pretty soon and reintegrate, and that’s going to take a lot of social skills that have maybe atrophied. You have these two characters who are king and queen of their kingdoms and then they come together, so it's about the compromise of their friendship. How do you tell someone what you’re thinking without upsetting them? And how do you listen to them? Friendship is very complicated, when you think about it. The top priority is finding food. The next is not becoming food. Because there are others out there on the island...like the horde of zombies that appear after night falls. Crafting a way out of this mess is a challenge like no other. Who could build a home while running from exploding creepers, armed skeletons, and an unstoppable tide of hot lava? Especially with no help except for a few makeshift tools and sage advice from an unlikely friend: a cow. Max Brooks: Research is very important to me in everything I do. I don’t write that many books because I have to spend years researching. With something like Minecraft, I live under the fear of someone saying, “That would never happen!” So I played thousands of hours of Minecraft, making sure the physics of the game work in the book. Plus, there are certain things that just happen in Minecraft that you could never think of on your own. In The Island, my character shoots his last arrow at a creeper and hits a bat that happens to fly by. That really happened when I was playing Minecraft!Max Brooks: Guy has to think and then talk through everything, and Summer is a do-er. She rushes in where angels fear to tread. I think a lot of that comes from the biome she spawned in. Guy had this island, this safe space where he had time to think and talk it out, whereas Summer spawned in the taiga, this frozen wasteland. This was the early version of the taiga, when there was almost no food, and she was freezing all the time, living on zombie flesh, and mobs came at night from every direction, so she had to fight for her life. I think it helped shape her, and so when confronted by a problem, Summer is more likely to jump in and then deal with the consequences, as opposed to Guy, who’d take a couple of days, maybe a week, to look at all the angles.

I talked with Max about how he found a great story in the clash of Guy and Summer’s personalities, and why that story is important in our pandemic-ridden times. But I had to first ask about what in the Overworld Guy is thinking when he decides to set out on his boat at the start of the book.Minecraft: The Island" is a book filled with experience. It shows how fast a 'modern' human can live on his own in a 'semi-virtual world' that is Minecraft. The author is the same person who made WWZ and has amazing writing techniques. His writing techniques really fit into the theme of the book and is one of the best, if not the best Minecraft book ever. Minecraft: The Island will tell the story of a new hero stranded in the world of Minecraft, who must survive the harsh, unfamiliar environment and unravel the secrets of the island.

The main character was an unnamed man, possibly a young man. (I like unnamed protagonists.) He was the only character in the book other than the game's NPCs. At its heart, this was a Man Against Nature story, with an internal and external arc-of-discovery. The main antagonists are the vintage 2017 hostile Minecraft mobs. The mobs are a vaguely supernatural group of entities. The protagonist only encounters a small number of the game’s mob cadre for its Survival Mode of play. Full disclosure—I am both a fan of the author and of Mincraft. In addition, I normally eschew Children’s popular literature. Max Brooks is an American writer of apocalyptic fiction and non-fiction as well as being an actor. He has more than twenty (20) published books in both series and stand alone. The last book of Brook’s I read was World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War. This is the first book in the Official Minecraft Series series. The series’ books are written by different authors. Another thing I would have liked to see was the reason for WHY he ended up in minecraft, the book makes it obvious that he was a real person before he went into minecraft as he thinks of things before such as computers and fridges. There is one small hint as to what it could be but it wasn't really confirmed. It annoyed me as I spent the whole book thinking It would tell me in the end and it didnt!Max Brooks: Yeah! When you go into the map, it’s way after Summer and Guy have moved on, so the mountain you’re seeing is not exactly as it was in the book. Actually, that was another huge challenge. I was two-thirds of the way through writing The Mountain and I sat down to play the game, and the whole Nether had changed, top to bottom! But instead of getting angry, I realized that was probably the greatest life lesson! When the world changes, you gotta change with it. His friends are simply his mind speaking subconsciously. They impart the wisdom that going it alone his very hard. That destroying conections with outside people. Despite the fact that the man cannot communicate fully and completely to his friends, which by human nature is impossible, they stand by him and provide moral, ethical and physical support. Later that same man's actions will be harm to his friends and he must endure pain and suffering to save them. This is symbolic of the fact your friends cannot only give aid to you but will need help from you too. More than a business transaction, it is a relationship built on compassion and loyalty.