Title: Headspace
Author:
J.D. Edwin
Publisher: Write Practice
Date: 2021
ISBN:
Length: 552 pages
Quote:
“This is a place that tests not your strength or speed, but yourself. Here, you
will stand on equal grounds with geniuses, athletes, and prodigies.”
When the
alien orb advertises the game called Headspace, Donna Astra Ching doesn’t want
to sign up. She has a job and a life—not the most exciting, but they’ll do—and
plenty of books. She’s deep in the process of unpacking her stuff and
decorating the house she’s just been able to buy for herself, pausing to
revisit all her favorite books along the way. But her friend Hannah is
pregnant. Pregnant women can’t play so Hannah signs up Astra as a potential
game player. And Astra’s chosen.
That’s when
she learns that in this “survival” game, losers aren’t just voted off the
program. Most of them die. “Reconstitution” of their minds into new bodies may
be possible, but most of them will stay dead. Injuries can be treated, but they
hurt. Astra is in for a lot of pain, of every kind, as she gets to know fellow
game players who don't survive. She bonds with a brave older woman. She
adopts a foster sister, barely seventeen. She has dates with a movie star whose
work she’s admired. One of the alien lifeforms who stage the show seems to like
her; another one punishes that one for showing any sympathy or noticeably helping any human win any
round of the game. It’s an elimination game, after all. There can be one
champion or none—and if Planet Earth fails to produce a champion, it will be
vaporized.
As some of
you Gentle Readers know, I follow, when time allows, a writing site hosted by
The Write Practice. J.D. Edwin is one of the other writers who
let this team guide her through the revisions, editing, and self-publishing of
a full-length Kindle e-book. There is an expectation that most Kindle e-books
aren’t going to be books commercial publishers would want to print and sell. I
started reading this one out of loyalty, and dystopian science fiction is not a genre I usually like,
either…and then I started going “Wow.”
The question is whether commercial publishers would want to launch a hardcover
edition, because this is a book fiction lovers are likely to want to revisit as other volumes in the series start coming out.
I’ve thought,
reading this not-very-scientific-fiction fantasy novel, that it might be the
next Harry Potter publishing
phenomenon. Really? An objection has been made; we’ll get to that. But first,
the top ten list of what this book has to offer:
1.
Edwin’s
web site mentions a fascination with what I suppose Google expects me to edit
into “strong women characters who somehow seem to do badly at life.” Headspace features three: Alexis, Astra, and
Evie. (Lovable lesbian heroine? Check.
Lovable Asian-American heroine? Check. Loveable heroine with conspicuous
disability? Check. Because extreme games seem likely to bring out heroism, the
story even shoehorns in a lovable male hero…not counting Astra’s father,
though reconciliation with him is part of her heroic struggle too.)
2.
Though
heterosexual not asexual, Astra has taken control of her sexuality before the
game starts. She doesn’t have a boyfriend. She doesn’t need one. Yes. There are
real women like that, though few novelists try to convince publishers. Not all
of us are dumb enough to waste ourselves on “boyfriends.” Yess!
3.
Eventually
the aliens will reveal their genders, but the adaptive suits they wear in
Earth’s atmosphere reveal nothing. They’re “they.” In the singular. Champions of singular "they" in written English should love this book just for that.
4.
A clear distinction
is made between being angry enough to kill people, which the game requires, and
going “mad” enough to be what the aliens call “splintered,” which can get a
player killed (they must be “of sound mind” to play). Probably the distinction can
only be made by having direct access to anyone else’s mind and memories, but at
least it is made.
5.
Interplanetary
romances are possible. How not? What other kind could champions of the
Headspace Games have? They’re going to leave the non-champions on their home
planets behind, in time and space.
6.
Astra elicits
greetings, as a celebrity, like “I can speak Mandarin, but I’m told you prefer
English.” And she does. Her narrative voice is the voice of someone who appreciates English: always the right,
conversational word, no showing off with obscure S.A.T. words, though you know
her verbal S.A.T. scores were high. (For fun and comfort, she curls up with a
geology textbook, which inspires her game strategy and persona as “Diamond
Donna,” a nickname she hates.) Edwin can write in the voice of aliens who sound
alien, but Astra sounds like an American with writing talent.
7.
Though it
would be too much of a stretch to say that Headspace
reflects one religion more than others, and the effectively immortal characters are more like Xanth "Demons" than like God or even the Pagan gods, each of the three heroines becomes
an example of a virtue Christians admire: fortitude, forgiveness, and
self-sacrifice.
8.
The
Headspace Game itself is a parody of the main Christian heresy of the twentieth
century. Within the Headspace Arena, vividly imagining an attribute you want to
have makes it yours. As “Diamond Donna,” Astra can sprout an armor of diamonds.
Wings, gills, super-strength, and any other assets they need (including
weapons) are generally at the players’ disposal, though in some games some
attributes are barred for being too obvious. It’s a virtual reality with real
aftereffects. Anybody can do anything…except quit the game while they’re still
alive.
9.
The
players’ celebrity status is clearly understood to be an additional torture, in
between rounds of the game, that make it harder to escape and also harder to
survive.
10. At the end of the book the Earth champion gets
to meet some of the other champions and ask some tough questions about how such
a horrible game came to exist. Some, not all. Enough questions remain to make
readers ask: Is this going to be a series? Yes, it is.
What’s not
to love: Kindle. Oh, wait...this book was available only on Kindle when I wrote this review in May, but it's out in paperback now.
Now, in
this web site’s tradition of brutally honest reviews, it’s time to consider
that one thing this novel lacks that Harry
Potter has. A gripping plot, it has. Characters you can relate to as equals
and also admire as heroes, it has. Mellower scenes that are calm, wholesome,
even funny at times, it has. But although Evie has just turned seventeen and
just got out of a school, this novel
lacks a real child star. Evie is
still growing but all the main characters in this book are living on their own,
making their own decisions. Well, considering the game, that seems appropriate. We're told that one of the previous champions won while she was underage, though her species seem to mature differently, and here's a sneak peek ahead: In another volume in the series we'll see what happens when a pre-teen alien plays the Headspace game. I don't see how that character could be cast as a pre-teen human but the idea here seems to be that players need life experience, not merely physical "maturity."
Meh. So
it’s the next Lord of the Rings. The "game" motif obviously recalls The Hunger Games...well for one thing, Headspace doesn't have a whole set of lovable ethnically diverse characters who all walk onstage, get killed, and "inspire" the Anglo-American protagonist, which was one of the more obvious things people hated about The Hunger Games. (Evie's role is more complex, more suspenseful.)
(With all the time and money lost to doomed efforts to go online from private homes, I'm no longer Amazon-associated, but old habits die hard. Click on the picture to order the real book.)
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