Review: FantasticLand

FantasticLand by Mike Bockoven
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

OH MY GOD THIS WAS SO MUCH INSANE FUN.

A+ for the audio!

This was another audio I listened to working 'Dark Store' - on my own, in a locked up retail store, in the basement of a deserted shopping centre - also, coincidentally, the day(s) that storms raged outside. COULD THE SETTING HAVE BEEN MORE PERFECT?!

Because this story begins with a storm. A storm that sees just under 400 theme park employees trapped for around 5 weeks. They've got plenty of food and water, and they're supposed to be looking after the park, but things don't quite go to the plan of the exhaustive safety manual designed for this specific kind of scenario.

The book is a series of interviews, and the good stuff starts coming hard and fast once we get to the interviews of those who found themselves as part of one of the 'tribes' that formed during the FantasticLand fiasco. I LOVED the format, and it made the audio that much more entertaining, because you get so many different voices and perspectives of what went down, and you get the classic variations that come from different people telling the same story, and I honestly didn't care that it all seemed a bit far fetched. I felt like, no matter how the situation itself came about, the way these kids dealt with everything seemed pretty real. People taking charge, people cowering, people trying to remain neutral, people just wanting to keep to themselves and stay safe, people trying to pretend it was all a bad dream.

The violence was insane, but as soon as it was told by someone who experienced it first-hand it suddenly seemed more tame, or more reasonable. I LOVED that aspect. Some of it was chilling, but more was just terrifyingly understandable.

This was such a unique, messed up story and I just loved the experience of reading/listening to it. I find myself going back through it to highlight passages that really stood out. I'll likely re-read it at some stage.

A LOT of fun, totally crazy, brilliant characters and variety. Not totally believable, but who cares when you get to have this much fun? Highly recommend.

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