This was essentially another in a long line of Hunger Games rip-offs and was bizarre. I'm not sure what I was expecting. I guess I thought it might be funny, but it wasn't. It was first person, which is typically worst person to voice a story in, and that showed here. The main character who ridiculously goes by "Jacq" is a too-young gofer at a TV studio who gets zero respect and has no prospects which begs the question as to why she's working there in the first place. Clearly she has no self-respect. She wants to be a stunt woman for reasons unexplained, but this is entirely the wrong place for her to be working if she's serious about pursuing that sort of a career. Clearly shge;s not too sharp. I shall call her Jackass from this point on.
The story is set in a world where the world of the 'faerie' (another author - correction pair of authors - too chickenshit to call them fairies) which has just been exposed to the human world, yet there's zero interest in it! No documentary teams are covering it; it's not a news item, and the first time it comes to prominence is through a reality show that Jackass's boss is running? How did this happen? Why did this happen?
There is this huge leap to 'it's suddenly happening', with zero explanation as to why the fairy king would even agree to such a stupid stunt, and then suddenly it's full-on Hunger Games where contestants could die even when they're simply competing in qualifying heats, and not one person, not even Jackass, thinks there's anything wrong with this? Why would she? She's a frigging moron.
Jackass's boss, who is all about publicity, inexplicably fires Jacq rather than exploit it for the news-worthiness of it, when she saves the life of a wannabe contestant on the course - a contestant who was trapped in a bear trap and pretty much lost her foot, who was then in danger of being eaten by an actual crocodile, and who finally was also in danger of being burned alive in a forest fire. In reality she would have sued the asses off the TV company - and won - and the company would have been bankrupted.
Instead, in the story, Jacq is carrying this injured contestant, who was all but passed-out from blood loss, when I read the following, as Jacq surveyed the area with a view to escaping the fire: "A cliff - complete with waterfall - loomed before us. Climbing it while carrying this girl was going to be almost impossible, but what choice did I have?" Hello there's a fucking fire, go into the waterfall, you stupid bitch! That's when I quit reading this shit.
Jackass's supposed motivation is that her sister disappeared into the fairy world a year or so before, which begs the question as to why she's pursuing being a stunt woman and working for a TV company instead of pursuing a life of becoming a private dick and going after her sister if she truly cares so much!
But then not a single thing in this story makes any sense except the predictable YA non-romance horseshit, the flat uninteresting characters, the shitty story-telling, and the general dumbness of the plot. It's trash: utter, total, unmitigated and ridiculous trash. If it had been a parody it would have made more sense, but it wasn't, and it wasn't funny, and it made no sense. You'd have more fun slitting your own throat with a blunted razor than you would reading this pathetic shit.
