What makes this work is Ampersand’s attention to detail as she focuses on how kids would react, problem solving, mob mentality, artificial intelligence, and more. Her writing makes it all fit together and you become mesmerized at watching Mrs. In the blink of an eye Meghan and her three young children Micah, Gavin, and Cassie, have had their quiet suburban lives transformed into a fight or die game for the amusement of alien viewers.Īfter my initial apprehension about the plot, Ampersand’s writing quickly turned the impossible scenario into a believable one. “The game will continue until the sentients of this planet have claimed at least 30% of the non-liquid surface area, or until only 5% of participants remain.” Fortunately you can earn special abilities during the “game”. In other words, the world is back to the stone age with no cars, electricity, computers, phones, television, stoves, water, guns, planes, et. Apparently they like to watch live action play as they have ruined all electronic wiring and neutralized most combustible materials. Earth has been “selected for the latest round of Maffiyir!” by an alien group referred to as “the Commonwealth”. To be honest, this book did not grab me in the first few pages as the premise seemed a bit far fetched. Erin Ampersand (AKA Erin Dury) has written the most unique apocalyptic science fiction book I have ever read. I'm happy to see that Book 2 is well under way! I'll certainly buy a copy once it's out!ĭisclaimer - I received a free copy of this book to review for the Self-Published Science Fiction Competition (SPSFC).Ī suburban mom hero, a worldwide real life game, superpowers, aliens, and a talking stuffed turtle - definitely not your average apocalypse storyline. Ampersand's design of the system at first seems quite basic, but as the narrative continues, it subtly becomes even richer and more complex to the point of truly feeling as if the characters are now living in a game. One other part of this book that I want to praise is the RPG aspect. How do you protect your kids when physical threats become imminent? How do you raise them to be virtuous when so many of your neighbors are behaving to the contrary? It's refreshing to see a mother of young children presented as a resourceful and resilient protagonist in maters outside of family life - but even within family life we see Meghan face some difficult situations. This is just not something we ever see in apocalypse literature or even generally in sci-fi.

This book has so many strong points, but the most prominent is, of course, storytelling from the perspective of a mother. Not only have I found myself a new genre in LitRPG, but also a new local author!

Time to Play by Erin Ampersand