The Game of Sunken Places by M. T. Anderson

Gregory Buchanan and Brian Thatz are friends, even though they are pretty much complete opposites of each other. Gregory is tall, slim, blonde and rather snarky-tongued, while Brian is shorter, dark-haired, bespectacled and pudgy, not to mention, he usually doesn't say all that much. But when Gregory gets a letter from his uncle, Max, in Vermont, with an offer to come up and stay at his house, he asks Brian to come along, and Brian agrees. He wants to go.

They take the train north during the fall holidays, and Brian asks his friend about the man who invited them. Gregory tells him that Uncle Max isn't actually related to him, but a friend of Gregory's father, and extremely eccentric to the point of actual madness. Gregory also has a cousin whom Uncle Max adopted, named Prudence. But Brian notices that a man is watching them, and very strangely, he has a bladed yoyo he's playing with. Brian finds all this rather weird, but the man gets off at the same train stop as they do and proceeds to ignore them, which makes Gregory think Brian may just be easily weirded out.

But when they buy snacks in town, one of the men there warns them off from the town and the house Gregory's Uncle owns, saying that people disappear in the woods up there, and all that comes out is their bodies. Both Brian and Gregory are made somewhat uneasy by all this, but Gregory's uncle picks them up in his wagon and takes them to the house. After dinner, they change into old-fashioned nightgowns, not realizing that Uncle Max has had all their clothes and socks destroyed by burning them in the house's furnace.

The next day, they awaken and realize that they have had the same very strange dream, about flying over the forest to mountains made of metal. True to Uncle Max's request, they have changed into tweed suits with matching capes and artificial collars. They also, the night before, found a very strange game board in the old nursery, stained by water and made mostly illegible by time. In exploring the house, they also find the timer that once went in the center of the game board. And once they turn it over, sand falls into the bottom, and a horn is heard in the forest out back.

Not only that, but names appear in the spaces on the board, names that weren't there just a moment ago. Names like "The Club of Snarth" and "The Petroglyph Wall". And even when one of them turns over the sandglass again, the sand continues to fall, only up this time.

It seems that the boys have been enlisted into playing a game against unknown opponents. But how can they even try to win when they don't know the rules or who they will be playing against, or the penalties for losing and prize for winning? They don't know, but based on the amount of time that passes against the slow running out of the hourglass, they have only five days to figure out what is going on and somehow win against unknown enemies. But as their foes grow deadlier and deadlier, how can the two schoolboy friends survive?

This book reminded me a lot of the films "Jumanji" and "Zathura" in their premise. Just like the movies, the Game of Sunken Places has a game board that changes in response to what happens in the real world, and the people who play it are subject to the same kinds of changes and can even die if they make the wrong moves or don't figure out what is happening around them in time.

But unlike the movies, this book just doesn't give us enough background on the game and what they are fighting for/against. Without understanding what is really going on, and by implying that the game is being played for the benefit of two different species/races of faerie creatures, only one of which we actually meet, the game remains mysterious, and unfortunately, what happened in the story started to lose my interest because nothing was ever explained until nearly the end, and then there wasn't enough explanation. Even the stuff at the very end made the game sound something like the movie version of Mortal Kombat II.

But here's the difference- in Mortal Kombat (and MKII), you cared about what happened to the characters because you got to see what was important to them, what they were fighting for. In this book, you don't know who they are fighting for, or on what side, and this whole annoying vagueness makes you just not care. I mean, at the end you still have no idea why this is being fought, and although you get some idea of the stakes, you aren't invested in either side winning at all- because you don't know hardly anything about either- certainly not enough to make a choice as to whom to support.

And without that, the whole book is pointless. You never cheer for the boys to win, because you don't know the opponents or the stakes, and even they don't realize until nearly the end, when Gregory seems to pull an entire explanation out of his butt. Seems to, because it could be entirely a delusion on his part, and we, the readers, would never know! Avoid this one if you want to read a story that makes some kind of actual sense at the end. This story left me for dead on WTF Island.