Index > To Sum it All Up (Reviews) > The Forbidden Game |
The Forbidden Game Trilogy |
In this, book one of The Forbidden Game trilogy, Jenny Thornton is out looking for a game one day, something to keep the guests at her boyfriends birthday party that night occupied. She notices a couple of not so nice looking guys following her down the street and ducks into the nearest open store, which turns out to be a game store. That’s not the strangest thing though. The store is full of exotic games and when the boy working there opens the cash register it’s full of odd looking money. Then there’s the guy himself, more gorgeous than anyone Jenny has ever seen in her life. Jenny is automatically attracted to him, and ends up buying a game, or actually, a box. She doesn’t know what is in the box, that is, until she goes home that night. At first everyone thinks that it’s a dollhouse, but though the tagboard does turn out to be a house, it’s a game, a game, the directions say, in which everyone must face their worst nightmare. Unfortunately for Jenny and her friends, the game isn’t talking about abstractions, but reality. Jenny and her friends find themselves actually in the tagboard house, in another world, a shadow world, and seeming to preside over this world is the boy from the game store. He calls himself Julian, the shadow man. Julian claims to be in love with Jenny. He wants her to join him in his world. Jenny though, does not want to stay in this world. So, Julian tells her, she will have to play The Game. And so it begins, Jenny and each of her friends facing their worst nightmares, their only hope being if they can get to the top of the house before dawn. In each room lies one of their deepest fears, and each must be faced to get to the top. Mixed up in all of this are Jenny’s feelings for Julian. Jenny wants to save her friends, and Tom, the boyfriend she has loved since grade school, and yet she finds herself drawn to Julian. He stirs up feelings inside of her that she has never had before. Jenny fights her feelings though, and manages to reach the top of the house with most of her friends, (One of her friends, Summer Parker-Pearson is lost to her nightmare of an increasingly dirty room) only to find that she’s been tricked and that there are still obstacles to their escape. When Jenny finally figures out a plan to save her friends, and herself, by pretending to decide to stay with Julian and then locking him in a closet, she almost doesn’t go through with it, so tempted is she by this shadow man. She does manage though, and Jenny and her friends, and Tom, are safe again, or so they think. The Hunter introduces us to the characters that we will be following through the rest of the trilogy, as well as some of the subjects that will come up later, including runes and other aspects of Norse mythology. It sets up the confusion of Jenny's feelings for Julian, and his determination to have her. My favorite thing about the book is that you immediately start to get a feel for who the characters really are, as opposed to just what they claim to be. And you're left dying to read the next book, to find out what else happens to Jenny and her friends, and of course, what's going on with Julian. The books biggest strength is in it's pacing which I find pretty much flawless. |
The Chase is the second book in The Forbidden Game trilogy. It picks up a few weeks after The Hunter left off. And where The Hunter took place in the Shadow World, The Chase takes place in the real world, our world, Jenny’s world. The book tells us that after Jenny and her friends returned from the Shadow World, they called the police and told their story, only to have no one believe them but Dee’s grandmother. People are looking for Summer, thinking that something tragic must have happened and that the teens minds just couldn’t handle it so they made up a story. Jenny and her friends meanwhile are looking for clues, ways to find the paper house which was stolen from Jennys home shortly after the game ended. They are afraid that the guys who stole the house, Slug and P.C, either have or will get into it and let Julian out of the closet that Jenny has him in. There’s no telling what would happen if Julian got out. Or maybe there is, since that’s what this book is all about. Jenny and her friends do manage to find the paper house, and it’s not a pretty site. The house looks like it’s been blown up, and there’s a mark on the floor that looks like a J, a signature. Julian is back. They don’t see him at first, though they all have nightmares, or what they believe are nightmares, before they realize that they are indeed real, that Julian and his creature friends, The Creeper and The Lurker, are after them. Meanwhile Jenny and Tom have broken up. Tom feels that he can’t compete with Julian and Jenny, despite all claims otherwise, still finds herself attracted to the shadow man. And then Julian appears to Jenny at the prom, and they strike a deal, a new game to decide things. Julian, The Creeper, and The Lurker, will go after Jenny’s friends, gathering them one by one. If her friends can save each other before he has all of them, then Jenny no longer is obligated to be with Julian. If, on the other hand, Julian gathers all of her friends, Jenny’s promise made in the first game, to stay with Julian, is to be kept. Julian gives them slight clues. The problem is that the clues are so vague they cannot be understood until after the deed is done. It looks as if Jenny and her friends are doomed. Finally though, Jenny finds Julians base, the place where he is keeping her friends captive. Jenny manages to get most of them away, but a few, including Tom, are lost. Then words appear in the painting that challenge Jenny, that say that in order to get her friends back she must go to the shadow world, on a treasure hunt. A challenge that Jenny immediately knows she’s going to take up. The Chase is probably my personal favorite of the three books in The Forbidden Game trilogy. I love some of the observations made by characters. Some of them really make you think. That's what I consider it's greatest merit, it's ability to make the reader sit back and reflect and think, if only to try and figure out Julians clues. The book is important not just because it continues the story, but because in this one you really get to see the changes that Jenny is going through, how she's gaining strength and independance as she faces Julian's challenges. The action is kept up throughout the story and the ending is even more strong than that of the first book in encouraging you to read the next installment of the trilogy. |
At the end of The Chase, Julian challenged Jenny to come to the shadow world and go on a treasure hunt in order to get back her cousin Zach and her boyfriend Tom. In The Kill Jenny and her friends Audrey, Michael, and Dee, are on a plane to her grandfathers old house, the only place that Jenny can think of where they might be able to find a way into the shadow world. Getting the key from the caretaker, they enter the house and find Jenny’s grandfathers instructions for opening the doorway to the shadow world. They follow them. When they go through the door they find themselves where they would least suspect themselves to be, in Joyland Park, an amusement park near Jenny’s grandfathers house. But, like the paper house in The Hunter, Joyland park is more than it first appears to be. Indeed, it is a part of the shadow world. They do not meet Julian at first, until Jenny falls down a mine shaft. Then he appears, and that is when he explains the rules of the game. Three gold doubloons, hidden in the park, and when they are all collected they become a ticket to cross a bridge to the parks new treasure island attraction, where Tom and Zach are being held. The thing is, there are more surprises, both bad and and good, in this game than in the ones before. Anything can happen, and does. From finding that Jenny’s grandfather’s soul has been trapped in an arcade machine, to finding the heads of Slug and P.C., the two guys who stole the game from Jenny, detached from their bodies, grotesque scenes appear in this story. But alas, there is some hope when they find Summer, not dead as they had thought, lying in the fun house. And they do find the three gold doubloons. Jenny even manages to help free her grandfathers spirit from the mechanical wizard that it was trapped in. This though, leads to a problem which is addressed when Jenny and her friends have won the game and are just about to leave the shadow world. Then the other shadow men show up. They claim that Jenny is theirs now since she messed with their prey. They begin to take Jenny, until all of her friends begin to offer themselves as alternatives. Jenny though, won’t let them. She starts to go with the shadow men, and is torn away from them by the most unexpected source, Julian. He faces the shadow men, telling Jenny and her friends to leave. The shadow men threaten his life. All they need to do is to carve out his name on a runstave and he will fade from existence. Julian still refuses to let them get at Jenny and her friends. They carve out his name. Jenny and her friends end up dragging a weak Julian back into their world. It’s too late for him though. Julian dies, fades away. Before he does though, he manages to give Jenny back her ring, the one he first gave her in the paper house. He’s changed the inscription on it though, so that now it says “I am my only master.” Jenny and her friends call their parents and get ready to go home. The Hunter was exciting, The Chase a bit thought provoking, The Kill touching. I may have read it before, but each time I reach the end, each time Julian gives his life for Jenny, tears threaten to escape because this, the last book of the trilogy, is Julian’s story. Here we learn more about him than in the last two books combined, and Julian is such a fascinating character, so intriguing, that you can sit and read about him for hours. Yes, action is kept up throughtout the story, due to Julians quick mood changes, but in this book emotion is the key. If you have a heart, something in here will be tugging on it. All in all, a great way to round out The Forbidden Game trilogy. Actually, probably the most memorable thing about the trilogy is it's characters, especially Julian. He's extremely multidimensional. The only weakness I've found in the trilogy is a lack of real insight into either Tom or Summers characters because they're absent for so much of the story. This isn't such a big deal for Summer but it would be nice to be able to see Tom more often so that the reader would better understand and accept him and Jenny's relationship in the end. Quote From: The Kill by L.J. Smith |
