The dying game : a novel
(Book)

This dystopian suspense story by Swedish author Avdic is like a heady mix of And Then There Were None and The Hunger Games. It's set in 2037, in the Protectorate of Sweden, under martial law imposed by the totalitarian Union of Friendship. Anna Francis, the main character, scratches out a living for herself and her daughter as a bureaucrat; she has a great deal of former experience in evaluating people, but she also has a secret in her past that makes her fear attention. Anna receives an assignment: she is to judge how job applicants, sent to a house on a remote island, handle stress by staging her own suicide and observing the group from inside the labyrinthine house's walls. Enter a power outage, throwing everyone, Anna included, into a supremely competitive struggle for survival. Avdic uses a counterfactual history device, in which the Berlin Wall remains up and the Eastern Bloc has grown more massive and totalitarian, to heighten the drama of her characters' plights. An Orwellian debut novel that never lets up.--Fletcher, Connie Copyright 2017 Booklist

Agatha Christie meets George Orwell in journalist Avdic's unsettling first novel, set in Sweden in 2037. A coup has led to a state of martial law and the country's transformation into a protectorate under the aegis of an international entity known as the Union of Friendship. Anna Francis, a bureaucrat, is estranged from her family and tempted by an unusual job offer from a high official called the Chairman. The Chairman explains that the secret RAN Project is short-handed and that a psychological exercise has been devised to identify a suitable new member of the team: prospective candidates are to be transported to a remote island, along with Anna, who will pretend to have been murdered, so that she can covertly observe their reactions to the unexpected trauma. Things don't go as planned, and Anna soon has a real murder to deal with. Avdic not only constructs a fascinating and original plot but makes her imagined reality chillingly plausible. Agent: Astri von Arbin Ahlander, Ahlander Agency. (Aug.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

[DEBUT] Anna is haunted by the trauma of leading an aid mission to the war-torn Protectorate of Kyzyl Kum. The mission was successful, until it slowly and painfully began to fall apart. Now Anna, a single mother who rarely sees her daughter, suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). But in 2037 post-military coup Sweden, she is given a second chance. Play dead for 48 hours, and her employment record will be wiped clean and she will be paid enough to retire decades early. The only requirement is that Anna observes how six people, candidates for government positions, react to her demise. Nothing about this stress test can be recorded or written down. No expense is spared for this weekend on a remote island; food and drink run freely. Each person has their own mysterious motivation for participating. The faked death goes exactly to plan. Until Anna wakes up to find another body and is knocked out by someone who isn't admitting that they know she isn't dead. Verdict Fans of mysteries set in confined environments (e.g., Agatha Christie's And Then There Were None or Ruth Ware's In a Dark, Dark Wood) will tear through this dark thriller debut novel set in a dystopian near-future.-Michelle Gilbert, Fox Lake Dist. Lib., IL © Copyright 2017. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

In the not-too-distant future, a group of carefully chosen people spends 48 hours on a remote Swedish island engaged in what at first seems like an exercise but turns into a high-stakes test of survival and betrayal.It's 2037, and the world is shockingly different yet terrifyingly the same: there's been another Cold War, and, at least in the Protectorate of Sweden, loyalty to the all-powerful government is paramount. Anna Francis, recently back from a soul-sucking assignment in remote Kyzyl Kum, is as chilly as a Stockholm winter, a distant mother who leaves her 9-year-old daughter with relatives more often than she sees her. In the well-worn tradition of "just this one last time" that never ends well, she's approached by the Chairman to participate in the top-secret RAN project, not as an actual member but as a quasi-spy. As if Agatha Christie's And Then There Were None was cross-pollinated with "The Most Dangerous Game," Anna is charged with observing a small group of hand-selected Swedes for two days on the island of Isola; that is, until she's meant to fake her own murder and disappear into the walls of the compound to watch how the others respond to the "crime." One of the participants is Henry Fall, a former colleague for whom she'd developed feelings, though the romance is as dry as the paperwork Anna reads in preparation. Turns out Henry has his own agenda on Isola, one that isn't wholly clear, though he and Anna are often frustratingly close to the same goal. Avdic's debut, while painting an unsettling portrait of our possible future, lacks a compelling main character, and for all the book's calculated plotting, it doesn't add up to a satisfying read. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

This dystopian suspense story by Swedish author Avdic is like a heady mix of And Then There Were None and The Hunger Games. It's set in 2037, in the Protectorate of Sweden, under martial law imposed by the totalitarian Union of Friendship. Anna Francis, the main character, scratches out a living for herself and her daughter as a bureaucrat; she has a great deal of former experience in evaluating people, but she also has a secret in her past that makes her fear attention. Anna receives an assignment: she is to judge how job applicants, sent to a house on a remote island, handle stress by staging her own suicide and observing the group from inside the labyrinthine house's walls. Enter a power outage, throwing everyone, Anna included, into a supremely competitive struggle for survival. Avdic uses a counterfactual history device, in which the Berlin Wall remains up and the Eastern Bloc has grown more massive and totalitarian, to heighten the drama of her characters' plights. An Orwellian debut novel that never lets up. Copyright 2017 Booklist Reviews.

[DEBUT] Anna is haunted by the trauma of leading an aid mission to the war-torn Protectorate of Kyzyl Kum. The mission was successful, until it slowly and painfully began to fall apart. Now Anna, a single mother who rarely sees her daughter, suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). But in 2037 post–military coup Sweden, she is given a second chance. Play dead for 48 hours, and her employment record will be wiped clean and she will be paid enough to retire decades early. The only requirement is that Anna observes how six people, candidates for government positions, react to her demise. Nothing about this stress test can be recorded or written down. No expense is spared for this weekend on a remote island; food and drink run freely. Each person has their own mysterious motivation for participating. The faked death goes exactly to plan. Until Anna wakes up to find another body and is knocked out by someone who isn't admitting that they know she isn't dead. Verdict Fans of mysteries set in confined environments (e.g., Agatha Christie's And Then There Were None or Ruth Ware's In a Dark, Dark Wood) will tear through this dark thriller debut novel set in a dystopian near-future.—Michelle Gilbert, Fox Lake Dist. Lib., IL (c) Copyright 2017. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Agatha Christie meets George Orwell in journalist Avdic's unsettling first novel, set in Sweden in 2037. A coup has led to a state of martial law and the country's transformation into a protectorate under the aegis of an international entity known as the Union of Friendship. Anna Francis, a bureaucrat, is estranged from her family and tempted by an unusual job offer from a high official called the Chairman. The Chairman explains that the secret RAN Project is short-handed and that a psychological exercise has been devised to identify a suitable new member of the team: prospective candidates are to be transported to a remote island, along with Anna, who will pretend to have been murdered, so that she can covertly observe their reactions to the unexpected trauma. Things don't go as planned, and Anna soon has a real murder to deal with. Avdic not only constructs a fascinating and original plot but makes her imagined reality chillingly plausible. Agent: Astri von Arbin Ahlander, Ahlander Agency. (Aug.)