[sic] by Scott Kelly

First Published: 17 August 2012
Pages: 208
Format: Ebook
Finished Date: 13 September 2012

Synopsis

One rule: If another player taps you on the shoulder, you have to completely change your life within the next fifteen minutes. In front of everyone. Your car, your virginity, your grades, your identity – nothing is safe. When five high school students from the wrong part of town devote their lives to playing the game David invented, they walk a line between insanity and enlightenment.

My Rating

My Review

[sic] was something I didn’t expect at all. Even the name was unexpected. I thought there was something wrong with my computer when I saw the name, to be honest. But it certainly did capture my attention. Nevertheless, I don’t see the link with the book. Maybe I missed some clue, but yeah, this isn’t really important, is it? On to the book!

So… this was a book I wasn’t prepared for. When I saw the blurb, I was instantly intrigued. I mean, what could changing your life mean? So I decided to read it. And I was blown away, truly I was. I was prepared for a book that was maybe slightly immature, maybe funny. What I was not prepared for was this. It truly got me sucked in by the level of thought that went into it.

While I cannot say that this is a book that brought me through a wide array of emotions, I can say that it certainly got me thinking. Maybe sometimes, we do have to change our lives. And sometimes, we do need that push that this game gave the players. Sometimes, we have to stop living behind our façade, pretending everything is okay. Maybe sometimes, we just have to step out and do something else and just do what we want.

I did really enjoy reading the book. In all aspects, this book helped me to see a different aspect of life. Many times, the books I read aren’t talking about the poorer side of society, where people really struggle to live. In this way, this book was an eye-opener, seeing how sometimes, people just want to be heard. To have an identity of one’s own, to truly be who one is, instead of being what society defines them to be.

The plot of [sic] was rather complex and I loved getting to understand the characters more and more as they matured and through them playing the game. It was, simply put, incredible. I truly saw how all the characters thought and how they really were like, especially towards the end.

The beginning was a little slow, but it really picked up towards the end. I loved how the story was told, with little commentaries thrown in by the psychiatrist whenever we are brought back to the present. It really gave me insights as to how David thought, because so little was really known about him. At the same time, we also started knowing more about Jacob. Up till now, right at the end of the story, I’m not certain whether he’s really sane. I mean, he did seem a bit unstable towards the end. But I guess, you win some, you lose some yeah?

The characters in this book were really good to read about. I felt like they really had substance to them. As in, the main characters were really focused on, and I felt I got to know all of them equally, except maybe for Jacob, but that’s cause he is the main character. As I mentioned earlier, character development was great too! I love character development, so it really got me interested as I saw how the characters matured and started understanding more.

All in all, this was a really good book. I did truly enjoy it, and was hooked, especially towards the end. While the beginning seemed a bit slow and monotonous at times, I found it all to be a great set-up for the ending and it just allowed everything to fall neatly into place. Certainly a very well planned-out book and one that truly made me think.

Read an excerpt here!

“I disagree. It was easy to start playing,” I explain, “It was easy to want to change things when everything was bad. But, in the end it’s about loyalty to a higher ideal. Maybe the highest ideal. You get one turn at life, and you’re more or less assigned a role from the start. For some people, it’s a nice one. For us, it was a bad one. But, it should be true for anyone. If this is your one opportunity at life, isn’t the ultimate homage you can pay to its creator—to God, or even to yourself—to systematically explore every possible dimension of human existence? Isn’t that a nobler ideal than raising a family? There are plenty of families. Maybe if you live in a time or a place where life means something, where you’re fighting in a war or rebuilding after one, or something with some narrative…but here in America, here and now, life has no point for us. The only causes available to join are corrupt ones. So why not do the best thing possible and explore every dimension of life?

"Isn’t that what everyone worked so hard for? Isn't that the big dream, to spend life experiencing it? Well, we're here. We accomplished the dream, life in America is easy. It's time to live a little, because nothing is coming next. And if there is a God, and a Heaven, you should ask yourself: what have you done with this life that's so great you deserve another one? Would you spend your time there counseling angels? Do accountants dream of crunching numbers on clouds?

“Could everyone play Eureka? No, society wouldn’t function. But should everyone who can play Eureka? I don’t know. I don’t know. But me and mine, much as I can hate them, I know: we are the result of all this quality of life that has taken the place of the actual quality of your life. But, I also think it requires you to be a sociopath. So, maybe I am a sociopath, or a narcissist, or whatever you said David was.”

Scott Kelly

When Scott was eleven, he was so upset by the ending of the classic story Robin Hood that he wrote his own and stuck it into the book. When he was fourteen he finished his first novel. By the time he was nineteen, he’d written four–the latest, JIMWAMBA, was published by an independent press in the United Kingdom. Dissatisfied with the experience, he took to stealing paper from his University and selling staple-bound copies of his manuscript at local festivals and gatherings, earning him a cult following that only grew as his eBook FRIGHTENED BOY reached its thirty-thousandth reader. He is a presence in the burgeoning social writing scene as a contest judge for the website BookRix, winner of WeBook’s “Page to Fame” contest, and chart-topper/featured author on the website WattPad. Over fifty-thousand people have read one of Scott’s novels online.
Scott’s constant need to improve his writing took him through a college education in Literature. He became determined to bring what he loved about classic literature to the modern reader, in a manner they’d appreciate as something new, but with its dues paid.
Scott Kelly is the ‘fresh new voice.’ He writes daring literature that asks difficult questions about the nature of humanity, but layers it in so many delicious coatings of action, thrills, and intrigue that readers often forget they are reading novels that address delicate questions about identity, perception and death. He delights in taking complex philosophical and metaphysical themes, but breaking them down using entertaining, familiar story setups – that he then mangles in attractive ways.
Now twenty-eight, he performs intellectual property duty for a lab where experimental drugs and chemicals are concocted. But while the chemists are busy filling beakers, Scott is trying to save compelling, thought-provoking literature for a new wave of readers.

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Scott will be awarding a $50 Amazon gift certificate to a randomly drawn commenter during the tour. 

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