Marc *Dark Reader with a Thousand Young! Iä!*’s Reviews > The Most Dangerous Games > Status Update

‘Wyatt starts naming names—controlled, clinical, lethal.

Alek watches the faces as he does. Not guilt. Not horror. Annoyance. Like he’s interrupting a meeting.’

He is, in fact, interrupting a meeting.

This book could really use 100 fewer pages.

‘“Wait,” Alek says. “You can’t be here. You were out.

“I was removed,” he says. “Not released.”

Wyatt blinks. “That’s … not the same thing.”

“No,” Saad says. “It isn’t.”’

Glad everyone is in agreement here that those two words don’t mean the same thing.

‘He looks around at their faces. “You think you were the only ones being watched?”

Beat.

“”Plus, what can I tell you?” the prince says, looking even more arrogant than ever. “Money talks.”’

……..
I honestly think “beat” was a placeholder the writer never went back to fill.

“GAME #4”

Wrong. This is game #5. The book’s creators can’t even keep count. Unless playing hoard games against AI individually, half the players being eliminated , then the rest being split into 3 groups travelling by plane them bus to either a desert, a mountain, or caves, then traversing them at great peril, counts as just one game.

‘The next thing they hear is him yelling at the top of his lungs, “GERONIMO!”’

Yes. That’s what you yell when jumping from a third story balcony about to collapse from a building in flames in the middle of an urban war zone with active bombing going on, down to a tarp held tight by the other competitors in this “game”. This is a very serious book.

'Amos continues, not preaching, not performing—just telling a truth he can't afford to soften. "My wife and children died in a strike two years ago," he says. "Wrong place. Wrong time. That's what people say when they want grief to sound clean."'

I don't see how anyone could suspect this book of using AI in places.

'Jimmy exhales, like he didn't realize he'd been holding his breath since he walked in.'

MrBeast released the breath he didn't realize he was holding.

Doing CPR:
‘Hard.
Fast.
Again.
Again.
Conner counts under his breath, steady, brutal. Rupert cries behind them, the sound small and animal. Jack gives breaths, tasting cave water and blood and regret.’

He tastes regret, y’all.

If you're wondering about this book's quality control, there are 50 people in a room. A voice says, "Some of you will be eliminated". A character then looks around the room. "His eyes move once across the room, taking inventory. Thirty. Not fifty. Not twenty. Thirty." In the next chapter, half the remaining people leave the room. There are now thirty people left. And no, there's no time overlap between the chapters.