Resumo de The Forbidden Game (1-3)

The Forbidden game by L J Smith

A relatively unknown book, this is only pleading for attention. A mystical un-mundane book, I hadn?t quite read anything like it. Intensely written and completely original, it lets us in on the secret of the Shadow World.

The explanation in the book is far more thorough but I will try my best. The Shadow World is a world that exist alongside ours, forever touching but rarely merging. It is full of beings called the Shadow Men. All completely inhumane and twisted, all Shadow Men with the exception of one. The unreality of all it, makes it seem entirely too realistic. Sounds a little idealistic to you? A little too much? Try it, and I assure you it will all make perfect (too perfect) sense.

This trilogy tells us of one Shadow Man. He is the Shadow man unlike any other. He is different. How is he different? A simple but clear distinction, Julian has fallen in love. Shadow Men are unable to even comprehend love. Julian is simply different.

Julian has fallen in love with a human girl. This trilogy is told through her prospective. Jenny Thornton is a normal girl. Stunningly pretty and a little naïve, she leads a happy life, surrounded by her friends, her kind but flawed boyfriend, Tom, and family. She has always felt inexplicably safe. But she knows, somehow, that there is something more out there, she just doesn?t know what. That is how she is tempted into a game shop, where Julian is waiting for her. This is his trap. She buys a game from him and trots home to where her friends are waiting. This is what Julian wants. They begin to play the game, but this is a game unlike another other. It becomes real, and they are trapped inside it, where Julian is waiting for them.

These three books contain all three games. Jenny and Julian are the two main players. If Jenny loses, she belongs to Julian. If Jenny wins, her and her friends go free. But how can a normal teenage girl play against a Shadow Man and possibly win? But Julian has one major fault: love.

It may sound a little strange in a summary like this, but these books are beautifully written. Every explanation is described in extensive detail, and by the end of the three books you will possess no questions. Through the three books, Jenny changes from being a meek little girl, constantly following and obeying her long-term boyfriend, Tom, into a ferocious, powerful young woman, with her own mind and her own personality, one that is prepared to do anything to save her friends, to save herself, and to win.

Julian?s character is a miracle of literature. A complex blend of evil and love. He is what he is. He is not human. He is a Shadow Man. He cannot understand things like Jenny understands things. But he loves her, and he desperately wants her to love him back. All of his actions are completely unjustifiable in a human perspective, but as readers it would be impossibly not to feel empathy and a sliver of sympathy for the Shadow Man, for the devastating truth is not he, not Jenny, not any of us as human beings, can help what we are, what we were born to be?

The interesting thing to note is that Jenny is able to see this. Despite herself and all that she believes in, she finds herself drawn towards him. She is not as flawless as she is first perceived to be, but she is only realising this now. That is the interesting thing about human beings ? there is good and bad in us all. Jenny begins to find her badness. This rule, however, applies to Julian as well but, as she begins to see the slight darkness in her, he begins to realise there might be some goodness in him?

But who will win? After three books, both characters, and the many others (Jenny?s friends), have changed so much, and the games have been so exciting, you?ll be wondering just what kind of an ending can be delivered. But the climax does not disappoint. By the last word of these books, everything that you?ve read before will make the most perfect of sense, annd you will finally be able to breathe at last.

I told you before no questions will remain. I lied. One will linger. What if the Shadow World did exist?? It all does seem a little too real.

A jaw-dropping, suspenseful, imaginative, crazy, magnificent (I could go on, I assure you) book. Don?t let the genre (Young Adult) distract you from reading it. You?ll be the one missing out, after all.

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