A review by bethanymiller415
Big Game by Dan Smith

2.0

The word that comes to mind to sum up this book is generic. You would think that the setting, a remote village in the mountains of Finland, would add a unique twist to this action novel, but so little detail is given that the place of the novel just feels like a generic wilderness. The main character Oskari is a part of a tribe that has a coming of age ritual in which the boy must go out into the wilderness and kill something with the ceremonial bow. The animal that he kills is supposed to represent what kind of man he will become. Not much more detail is give about the Tribe and its rituals beyond that, so again it has the feeling of a generic version of a white person’s idea of what native people might do. Because Oskari is smaller and weaker than the other boys his age, no one (including his father) thinks that he will succeed in killing anything. However, Oskari stumbles upon something much bigger and more important than simple wildlife. He stumbles upon an escape pod containing the President of the United States! The President has been sold out by some of the people he trusts most in the world, and it’s up to Oskari to help him escape the vaguely Middle Eastern man who is now hunting him.

Though this novel is jam packed with action, I didn’t find it all that exciting. Action movie tropes abound, and the characters are all very two dimensional. Many of the plot twists strain credibility. From what I gather, this is a novelization of a movie that recently came out, so that could drum up some additional interest. Optional purchase where adventure and survival fiction is popular with the middle school crowd.