THE CALLING

A dangerous game begins with players from around the world competing for the future of the human race.

Twelve Players, each a descendant of a long line of other, earlier Players, have been activated. They’ve trained their whole lives in the event that Endgame would begin. The stakes: The winning Player will save his or her bloodline from extinction. The objective: find three keys hidden across the globe and bring them together. The only rule: Find the keys. Everything else is fair game. It’s a gimmicky premise, one that dominates the whole book. The plot is paper-thin, and the action is perfunctory at best. All the Players think methodically, constantly moving forward like sharks; this makes for monotonous sections with little to differentiate one Player from another. The standout is Sarah, a teen girl from Omaha, but her defining attributes are an annoying non-Player boyfriend and an inability to choose between him and the hunky Jago, a fellow Player. As a cross between The Hunger Games and Raiders of the Lost Ark, the concept of Endgame has potential—but only that, even after some 450 pages. By the end of the book, several Players have been removed from the field and the authors have established a twist, indicating that this potential may be realized in the forthcoming sequels.

A poor start, but future installments might be worth it.