Since the 1970s, FantasticLand has been the theme park where Fun is Guaranteed!” But when a hurricane ravages the Florida coast and isolates the park, the employees find it anything but fun. Five weeks later, the authorities who rescue the survivors encounter a scene of horror. Photos soon emerge online of heads on spikes outside of rides and viscera and human bones littering the gift shops, … breaking records for hits, views, likes, clicks, and shares. How could a group of survivors, mostly teenagers, commit such terrible acts?
Presented as a fact-finding investigation and a series of first-person interviews, FantasticLand pieces together the grisly series of events. Park policy was that the mostly college-aged employees surrender their electronic devices to preserve the authenticity of the FantasticLand experience. Cut off from the world and left on their own, the teenagers soon form rival tribes who viciously compete for food, medicine, social dominance, and even human flesh. This new social network divides the ravaged dreamland into territories ruled by the Pirates, the ShopGirls, the Freaks, and the Mole People. If meticulously curated online personas can replace private identities, what takes over when those constructs are lost?
FantasticLand is a modern take on Lord of the Flies meets Battle Royale that probes the consequences of a social civilization built online.
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The premise of the book is very Lord of the Flies; however the way the book is set up is a series of interviews with different people. You see how some people interpret a situation and the reality, if you can call it that. The book has its dark moments, but it was easy to read and I couldn’t put it down. Definitely a fast paced book that will keep you questioning even after you’re done.
What a fantastic read! This showed up in my “must read” list and I’m glad I did. It’s written in the style much like World War Z by Max Brooks in that an interviewer is attempting to get the real story of what happened in Fantasticland. The depths of human depravity are explored and made me wonder how quickly such a thing might occur in real life. Looking back on Katrina, perhaps quicker than we would think.
Excellent read.
Not ‘boo’ scary, but ‘Jesus what is wrong with people’ scary.
The best thriller I have read in a while. Bockoven delivers a powerful, twisted tale of teenagers trapped in an amusement park who, when cut off from the outside world and social media, turn on each other in a modern day Lord of the Flies. I found it difficult to put this book down! Bockoven is an author I will be following!
Quasi-Blair witch meets Lord of the Flies. I liked the interviews being used to tell the story. Different take on what would happen during an extended natural disaster. More of a thriller than a horror story.
What an incredible account of horrifying events in the wake of a hurricane hitting an amusement park. The story is told from interviews given to a reporter. The book flows well, and Mr. Bockoven’s development of each character is good. The book did not hold my interest as well as I like, but regardless, a good read.
Wow, this gave me some major Lord of the Flies vibes! Only this one is even darker and creepier because it doesn’t take place on an island in the middle of nowhere but in an amusement park that had everything one needed to survive and yet, stranded employees still turned against each other. Is humanity really self-destructive and violent by default? What prompts us to turn against one another even when the supplies are seemingly in abundance? “FantasticLand” explores many of these questions by presenting each “tribe’s” side and trust me, these interviews will make your hackles rise even though you know they’re fictional. One of the most original and disturbing books I’ve read this year. I would definitely recommend it to all fans of the genre and I’d totally give it ten stars if I could.
I loved this book! It is one of the best I’ve read in a long time. I would love a sequel of some sort or to have it from another point of view of the characters. It is a dark read and makes you wonder if in those circumstances you’d act the same.
I really, really enjoyed this book. The setting of an amusement park is excellent. Amusement parks are supposed to be full of happy memories, of good experiences, of cute moments with your kids. It is not supposed to be death and violence. Like thousands, probably millions, of others, I worked at an amusement park when I was younger; that made the destruction happening here a bit more real.
FantasticLand is an amusement park in Florida located north of that other amusement park there. A hurricane of all hurricanes swings by and luckily isolates the park more than destroying it. It shouldn’t be a big deal, but it ends up being one for the few hundred employees who stayed behind explicitly to watch and care for the park after a hurricane. They have food and water that will last for weeks but the isolation gets to them. Before too long, they are separated into tribes and simply trying to survive against all the other tribes.
The book can easily be compared to LORD OF THE FILES in that the idea of kids stranded away from civilization need to govern themselves and instead end up killing each other. FANTASTICLAND is much more engaging though. There are so many points to pull a reader in: which tribe do you identify with? where would you have done things differently? who was right and who was wrong? The story is told from the perspective of multiple interviews: a reporter is interviewing many people involved for a book detailing the entire event. I found this very engaging. I was able to see the different scenes from different points of view. I was able to decide where I would want to be, no, now where I would want to be. And most importantly it let me feel the pain of different people from all over. One chapter would be how scared a group of people would be and the next chapter would tell why the other group was being scary. Very highly recommended!
This novel is mostly told in a series of interviews. The cast of characters is very long. It took me a while to get into the story. I considered quitting it, but I am glad I didn’t. It is twisted and sometimes gruesome. You don’t want to believe the events in this novel could happen and at the same time know it is possible if the right types of individuals are involved. Overall a very good read.
This story does an excellent job of showing how disasters can do one of two things: either being out the best in humanity or the worst. With our nation’s youth dependant on electronics to keep themselves entertained and connected, being without out these “necessities” can quickly lead a group cut off from civilization to reach mass chaos.
Wonderful narrations give the various POVs in this journalistic-style fiction piece a real air of realism. It almost makes you want to Google to see if it happened, that is how good the story is and how well the book is brought to life through the narrator’s voices. It’s not usually my style of genre, but I couldn’t stop once I started
It was a good read and to a degree you could see this actually happening at a giant corporate theme park. But there is still some unbelievabllity in the motives of some young people so easily being able to kill each other (spoiler alert) because of their herd/group/gang/tribe mentality in such a short period of time. But good believable characters and the author did great research on how a park like that runs behind the scenes.
This book haunted me! I did not have to stretch my imagination that far to believe that human nature could take such a twisted turn under the right (wrong) circumstances. It confirms that we are so attached and rely so much on our technology, that having it taken away, even for a short period of time can put us through a very scary withdrawal.
FantasticLand: A Novel
By Mike Bockoven
5 out of 5 stars
The book FantasticLand: A Novel by Mike Bockoven is a story that will both shock and keep you reading until the final page. It is a book that is chilling and one I couldn’t put down. It is written in the form of interviews with those who survived after a hurricane ravages Florida. In the aftermath a group in the park FantasticLand tell a tale that is sure to unnerve anyone who reads it. It is a horror novel that tries to find answers to questions of what went wrong. They had enough food and water. They had a survival plan. Why the chaos? This is a story that had me on the edge of my seat wondering what was going to happen next. It kept me reading far into the night to finish it. The atmosphere runs the gambit from pure terror to relief and indifference when those who survived finally were rescued. The author does an amazing job of bringing the characters and the situations that they faced to life. I felt like I was right there watching everything that happened. Don’t miss out on a story that gives you a glimpse into the psyche of the survivors and the actions taken by those who were there when they were rescued.
I enjoyed the format of this story. It is written like a true story with eyewitness accounts and interviews with survivors. It was crazy the way things devolved so quickly in the park. There were a bunch of things left unexplained at the end, which I guess makes sense given the format – we don’t always know every detail of who, why, or how something happened in real life. I think it was a clever idea to set this in a park that was supposed to be a Disney/Universal competitor in Florida. It seemed like something that could have happened considering how the government handles the devastation caused by hurricanes. It is a bit gory at times, but if you can handle that and like YA, it’s a great book.
In only one word, this book is, like its name, Fantastic.
The blurb really lays it all out for you. It’s the story of what happened in an amusement park when a couple hundred kids (mostly teens) were left to fend for themselves and cut off from the outside world after a hurricane. It’s told through a series if interviews (think World War Z) that weave together to give us the whole, horrible, frightening story (modern day Lord of the Flies). If any of that sounds like your kind of story I highly recommend you pick this book up right now. Just know, once you do it’s doubtful you’ll be able to put it down until you’ve read the last horrifying word. This book is scary but not in the, oh there’s jumps and boos so much as the psychological scary of what the human species is capable of when faced with adversity. I listen to a LOT of true crime and read a LOT of psychological thrillers so I fully believe as far fetched as this premise sounds right out of the gate, that one psychopath/sociopath left in this type of situation with a group of highly suggestible teenagers looking for a “leader” could completely create this world of death, destruction and danger. Don’t believe me? Read the book. Look around the world. Then tell me it seems impossible.
I loved everything about this book. I was specifically looking for a book similar to the Hunger Games or a Battle Royal theme and this met my desire. Even though the whole book was recollections from characters, the next person picked up where the last left off so I didn’t lose interest and I cared about the characters being talked about. It was fun to hear about the psychological tolls or decision making affecting these kids. Even though it was a book that definitely involved death, it wasn’t unnecessarily gory and it wasn’t something meant to scare. Overall it was a great book and I’m sure I will be reading it again in the future.
**spoiler alert** Fantasticland was, well, fantastic. I want it noted that because the author was so well written, this book was actually dull in the beginning. I really felt like I was reading interviews from the rescue workers perspective, or a management standpoint, at first. Then he delves into the tribes, the set ups and he does it all with such finesse, that you could believe this was a true story. It was sick and dark and give me the brutality I crave from a novel like this. But it’s done so skillfully that you find yourself feeling bad for certain people and hating others strongly. This book will make you take a look at how our society could realistically breed a situation like this. It makes you think about what kind of people are really out there, working with you every day, and if a crisis of that magnitude were to come our way, who could you trust?
It truly calls to mind a Lord of the Flies for the 21st Century. One of those books with so much in it that I have to read it again because I was enjoying the story too much the first time through to really process all of the content. Where did it all start to go south? What triggered it? Absolutely fascinating! Don’t miss this book!
Best book I’ve read in a long time. I continue to think about the issues it raises. Well plotted out including a satisfying, yet still thought provoking, ending. The author handles numerous characters and sub-plots skillfully – allowing interesting characters with individual voices to emerge but avoiding typecasting. Fabulous i/m/o.