Invitation to the Game

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Youth level.
"Half Moon Books."
Unemployed after high school in the highly robotic society of 2154, Lisse and seven friends resign themselves to a boring existence in their "Designated Area" until the government invites them to play The Game.

COMMUNITY REVIEWS

Not the Hunger Games submitted by Jan Wolter on August 16, 2013, 5:54am This book, originally published in 1990, was re-released in 2010 under the title "The Game" in hopes of drawing the attention of fans of "The Hunger Games". There are some similarities in the beginnings of the two books. A teen girl in a hopeless dystopian society is invited to participate in mysterious game. But the game in "Invitation to the Game" couldn't be more different from the one in "Hunger Games".

"Invitation's" heroine, Lisse, isn't a lone heroine like Katniss. Lisse is just one of a group of teens who enter the game together and who must cooperate and work together to succeed. Neither Lisse nor any of the other teens is really identifiable as the "hero" of the story. Lisse is really just the narrator, not the hero. It is a story of cooperation not competition, where survival depends more on constructive and creative skills than on fighting. "Invitation" is vastly less vicious than "Hunger Games" (though there is a bit of violence in the early parts). Not surprisingly, Invitation isn't nearly as edge-of-your-seat exciting either, but it's a good book in it's own way. It really reminds me much more of Heinlein's "Tunnel in the Sky" than of "Hunger Games".