HomeGroupsTalkMoreZeitgeist
Search Site
This site uses cookies to deliver our services, improve performance, for analytics, and (if not signed in) for advertising. By using LibraryThing you acknowledge that you have read and understand our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy. Your use of the site and services is subject to these policies and terms.

Results from Google Books

Click on a thumbnail to go to Google Books.

Isola by Åsa Avdic
Loading...

Isola (original 2016; edition 2016)

by Åsa Avdic

MembersReviewsPopularityAverage ratingConversations
1289211,970 (2.96)None
"A masterly locked-room mystery set in a near-future Orwellian state. The year is 2037, and on the tiny island of Isola, seven people have been selected to compete in a forty-eight-hour test for a top-secret intelligence position with the totalitarian Union of Friendship. One of them is Anna Francis, a workaholic bureaucrat with a nine-year-old daughter she rarely sees and a secret that haunts her. Her assignment: to stage her own death and then to observe, from her hiding place inside the walls of the house, how the six other candidates react to the news that a murderer is among them. Who will take control? Who will crack under pressure? But then a storm rolls in, the power goes out, and the real game begins. Combining suspense, unexpected twists, psychological gamesmanship, and a sinister dystopian future, The Dying Game conjures a world in which one woman is forced to ask, "Can I save my life by staging my death?"--… (more)
Member:LottaBerling
Title:Isola
Authors:Åsa Avdic
Info:Stockholm : Natur & kultur, 2016
Collections:Your library
Rating:***
Tags:läst 2016

Work Information

The Dying Game: A Novel by Åsa Avdic (2016)

None
Loading...

Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book.

No current Talk conversations about this book.

English (8)  Catalan (1)  All languages (9)
Showing 1-5 of 8 (next | show all)
I, too, won this book from a Goodreads giveaway. i was super excited to actually read this even though it is outside my normal genre. I was sooo bored with this book. I am the type that likes to put herself into the story line so that I feel like I am part of the story. There was no background to this book in my opinion. I didnt really relate to any one of the characters. It has no "oomph" to pull me in. To me, it was scattered all over the place. Even the ending was bizarre. Not sure I would recommend it. ( )
  SRQlover | Jul 18, 2023 |
3.5 stars...One of the major downfalls of this book was the lack of world building upfront to make the rest of the story make sense. ( )
  EmpressReece | Mar 9, 2018 |
This was an interesting story told in the future - 2035/7. What happens when you put a few people on an isolated island and have a fake murder? How will they react and will everything turn out the way you hoped? The story bounced between Henry and Anna's POV and then at the end to a few others. Some of it was scary and some of it I wanted to know more, especially about the other characters.

Thanks Penguin Random House First to Read for my advanced copy. ( )
  MHanover10 | Feb 4, 2018 |
This is one of those times where the premise is better than the actual story. I thought I was getting into something that would be intensely thrilling and packed with action. Instead, this book was slow paced, with tons of little anecdotes on Anna's life before this competition. The author switched between different points in time and different characters. While this was interesting and appreciated, it made it super easy to guess what happened and what was going to happen in terms of the competition. That was a bit of a let-down because I was hoping it would be something of a mystery or a twist ... and there wasn't one. The novel may be set in 2037 but there really wasn't too much that made it different than 2017, so that was a bit useless in my opinion. Overall, this novel just let me down. I was expecting a thriller but instead, I got an okay novel about a competition where I had already guessed the main points of the story.

Thank you to Penguin Random House and First to Read program for this ARC in exchange for my honest review. ( )
  veeshee | Jan 29, 2018 |
Schweden 2037. Aus dem unabhängigen Königreich ist ein Mitgliedstaat im Verbund der Freundschaftsunion geworden. Die EU ist Geschichte und die Abhängigkeit von einem der UdSSR nicht unähnlichen Staat ist offenkundig. Die Geheimdienste bestimmen, was im Land geschieht, die Bürger haben sich eingerichtet und verstanden, dass man besser weniger als zu viele Fragen stellt. Anna Francis arbeitet für den Staat und hat vor kurzer Zeit eine unmögliche Mission recht erfolgreich beenden können. Nun will sie eigentlich endlich wieder Zeit mit ihrer Tochter verbringen, die sie lange in Schweden zurückgelassen hatte. Doch man bittet sie zu einem Gespräch und bietet ihr einen Job an, den sie aus finanziellen Gründen kaum ablehnen kann: sie soll an einem Recruiting-Verfahren für das geheime RAN-Projekt teilnehmen und dafür eine Gruppe von potenziellen Kandidaten beobachten und analysieren. Nur wenige Tage soll der Auftrag dauern, dafür muss sie sich jedoch mit den Bewerbern auf eine isolierte Insel begeben. Kaum nachdem sie angekommen sind, läuft jedoch das minutiös geplante Verfahren völlig aus dem Ruder.

Es fällt mir nicht ganz einfach, bei diesem Roman zu einem Fazit zu kommen. Zu unterschiedlich gestalten sich die einzelnen Phasen. Im ersten Drittel lernen wir die Protagonistin Anna kennen. Sehr ausführlich wird ihr Privatleben und das vorhergehende Projekt beschrieben. Dies ist alles nicht uninteressant, aber auch nicht wirklich zielführend. Der stärkste Part des Buchs ist der Projektbeginn auf der Insel. Die Beschreibung des clever angelegten Gebäudes, der geplante Ablauf des Projekts, die Vorstellung der Kandidaten – hier wird der als Thriller eingeordnete Roman richtig spannend. Man weiß, was gleich passieren wird, hat einen Informationsvorsprung gegenüber den Figuren – bis man merkt, dass es noch einen zweiten Aufbauplan geben muss, der sich deutlich von dem ersten unterscheidet. Noch jemand hat hier etwas vorgesehen und nicht alles wird verlaufen wie gedacht. Die Auflösung fand ich wiederum unbefriedigend. Ein zu schnelles Ende, das etwas lieblos abgehandelt wurde und für mein Empfinden wesentliche Fragen nicht beantwortet hat.

Anna als Protagonistin kann den Roman über weite Strecken tragen. Allerdings bleibt sie mir als Leser immer etwas zu distanziert und emotionsreduziert. Ihr Verhältnis zu ihrer Tochter und zu ihrer Mutter finde ich befremdlich, eine wirklich gute Erklärung, warum dies so ist, erhält man jedoch nie. Eine Veränderung kann man bei ihr im Verlauf der Handlung auch nicht wirklich beobachten. Die anderen Figuren bleiben letztlich alle Randnotizen und relativ eindimensional auf ihre singuläre Funktion reduziert.

Durchaus mit Überraschungen versehen kann der Roman auf der Handlungsebene einiges bieten, aber mir hätten ein wenig mehr Stringenz zu Beginn und ein weniger holpriges Ende mit klarer Auflösung besser gefallen. ( )
  miss.mesmerized | Dec 16, 2017 |
Showing 1-5 of 8 (next | show all)
no reviews | add a review

» Add other authors (8 possible)

Author nameRoleType of authorWork?Status
Åsa Avdicprimary authorall editionscalculated
Grlic, OlgaCover designersecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
You must log in to edit Common Knowledge data.
For more help see the Common Knowledge help page.
Canonical title
Original title
Alternative titles
Original publication date
People/Characters
Important places
Important events
Related movies
Epigraph
Dedication
First words
Quotations
Last words
Disambiguation notice
Publisher's editors
Blurbers
Original language
Canonical DDC/MDS
Canonical LCC

References to this work on external resources.

Wikipedia in English

None

"A masterly locked-room mystery set in a near-future Orwellian state. The year is 2037, and on the tiny island of Isola, seven people have been selected to compete in a forty-eight-hour test for a top-secret intelligence position with the totalitarian Union of Friendship. One of them is Anna Francis, a workaholic bureaucrat with a nine-year-old daughter she rarely sees and a secret that haunts her. Her assignment: to stage her own death and then to observe, from her hiding place inside the walls of the house, how the six other candidates react to the news that a murderer is among them. Who will take control? Who will crack under pressure? But then a storm rolls in, the power goes out, and the real game begins. Combining suspense, unexpected twists, psychological gamesmanship, and a sinister dystopian future, The Dying Game conjures a world in which one woman is forced to ask, "Can I save my life by staging my death?"--

No library descriptions found.

Book description
DO YOU LIVE TO PLAY? OR PLAY TO LIVE?

THE YEAR: 2037. The Soviet Union never fell, and much of Europe has been consolidated under the totalitarian Union of Friendship.

THE LOCATION: A remote island off the coast of Sweden.

THE OCCASION: A forty-eight-hour competition among seven successful professionals for a top-secret intelligence position.

THE ASSIGNMENT: Anna Francis, a workaholic bureaucrat with a nine-year-old daughter she rarely sees, must stage her death and observe how the six other competitors react.

Who will take control? Who will crack under pressure? And can Anna save her life by staging her death?

But then a storm rolls in, the power goes out, and the real game begins in this masterly locked-room mystery set in an eerily plausible future.

Haiku summary

Current Discussions

None

Popular covers

Quick Links

Rating

Average: (2.96)
0.5
1 2
1.5
2 9
2.5 2
3 10
3.5 1
4 8
4.5
5 2

Is this you?

Become a LibraryThing Author.

 

About | Contact | Privacy/Terms | Help/FAQs | Blog | Store | APIs | TinyCat | Legacy Libraries | Early Reviewers | Common Knowledge | 203,220,726 books! | Top bar: Always visible