Book Review – FantasticLand

STAT

Genre:	Thriller/Horror	Amazon Rating:	4.3
Publication Date:	2016	Goodreads Rating:	3.96
Pages:	217	POV:	1st person Interviews

DISCLAIMER:  

1. Trigger Warnings.  Should you desire trigger warnings, please seek them out.  If you do not know where to look for said warnings, I found this article from Book Riot to be a helpful starting place.  
2. Spoilers.  I apologize in advance, but there will probably be some small spoilers.  I try to limit discussion to information found in the cover copy.  If you are sensitive to spoilers, you may want to skip My REST section.  

SETUP.

In September 2017, Florida was eviscerated by Hurricane Sadie, knocking out power grids, flooding, and isolating communities. No one was prepared for the destruction, and it left emergency personnel scrambling for weeks. FantasticLand, a 1970s amusement park squarely in Sadie’s path, evacuated all guests and activated its disaster protocol, which provided bunkers, generators, water, food, and first aid supplies to a cross section of employees from all areas of the park who volunteered to stay behind.  Approximately 300 employees, mostly college-aged, stayed.  For thirty-five days, all were cut off from society at large due to massive park flooding, failed power grids, and a park rule prohibiting employees from carrying cellphones. When emergency military troops arrived five weeks later, they were met with gore and 207 employees.  Pictures of bones, viscera, and heads on spikes were leaked to the public and the event was dubbed the Battle of the Tribes. The public demanded answers. How could people do this to one another?

 Adam Jakes, an investigative journalist, interviewed over 20 people with ties to this event hoping to discover why.  This book attempts to piece the puzzle together.

MY WHY; or, What I Thought I’d Like About This Book.

Earlier this year I discovered the Booktube channel, Reading Wryly. I was catching up on her backlist videos and came across her Amusement Park Horror vlog.  I enjoy reading a good circus story, double points for creepy atmosphere, so why not expand my horizons to amusement parks.  Stephen King’s Joyland was already on my radar and since I’m still exploring my tastes in horror, FantasticLand seemed like the perfect fit.

Then I saw that FantasticLand was free with my Audible membership.  Done.

NOTEWORTHY ELEMENTS.  (You decide if they are Pros or Cons.)

1. Gore.  It’s in the synopsis of the book, so don’t think Bockoven is going to shy away from it.  He doesn’t.

2. Violence.  Though gore and violence often go hand in hand, I want to be clear that in FantasticLand there is on page violence.

3. Interview Format.   Not a true back and forth Q & A, each chapter is its own interview told in a narrative.  The Interviewer inserts himself into the narrative periodically.

4. No Definitive Answers.  If you need to be able to know that Z horrible thing happened because of Y, then you will be disappointed.  While some answers are provided, many more questions are revealed.  But that’s life, isn’t it?   There usually is not one true simple answer, there are many tangled and co-mingling factors which lead to the perfect storm. (Pardon the pun.)  A few times I caught myself wishing we could go back and reinterview a subject with new questions based on reveals and discoveries from later interviewees.  And then, the last quarter of the book…Bockoven does a really good job of playing with your perception of events and turning truths on their head.

5. Superb Audio Narration.  Angela Dawe and Luke Daniels did an amazing job bringing these interviews to life.  

My REST.  (Reaction. Experience. Summary. Thoughts.) 

This book is either for you or it’s not.  The publisher likens the book to Lord of the Flies meets Battle Royale and while I can’t speak to those comparisons, I’ve also seen some reviewers liken it to The Hunger Games.  I can see the similarities, brutal teens, but I would argue the WHY is different.  In The Hunger Games, the teens were fighting over scarce resources and knew they were going in for a fight to the death.  Kill or be killed was the name of the game.  However, in FantasticLand, resources – food, water, shelter – were plentiful.  These people chose violence as a means of survival. Bockoven is exploring not only human capacity for violence, but the impact of said violence, and how people cope with and interpret the trauma.

I thought the narrative style served the premise.  Quite often there is no one answer to tragedy and the more we hunt for that one truth, the more questions we create.  Bockoven does what I love so much, leaves space for the reader to fill in gaps, have opinions, and make inferences.  If the elements I’ve noted above don’t bother you, then I’d recommend this book.  And, if you can get your hands on a copy of the audiobook, I’d definitely experience the book that way.

Thus concludes my in-depth book review of Mike Bockoven’s FantasticLand.  Hope you enjoyed.  I’ll see you next time I stick my head up and out of a book.