What a truly delightful book full of totally "real" characters. A brilliant concept, life in a too hot world with too many people, too little water, too little food and an interesting "solution" to the over-population. The main characters, although very young, are old beyond their years and their interaction with people whilst on their journey is extraordinary on many different levels.

Whilst this book is, I believe, written for young adults, its originality and thoughtfulness definitely has something for old adults, like me.

Have you ever read a book in one breath? Have you ever drawn a sharp intake of air in the opening pages and then held it right until the end, barely able to move or tear your eyes away from the devastation on the pages in front of you? This is what it felt like when I was reading Nicky Singer’s post-apocalyptic The Survival Game. 

The Survival Game is one of those rare novels. Beautifully written, it is a book that will drag you along through every emotion possible as you try to fathom how devastatingly plausible the entire story is. 

Our protagonist is 14-year-old Mhairi, a girl who has travelled alone from the Sudan and is making her way across Britain to her home in Scotland. Except that it might not be her home anymore; the world as we know it consists of closed borders and checkpoints, each country cutting itself off in the face of catastrophic environmental devastation and global human migration. This is our world a mere 30 years in the future and it is not pretty. 

Mhairi owns nothing except the clothes on her back, a gun with no bullets and her papers that prove her right to be in Scotland. All she needs to do is to keep heading north and she will eventually get there, to her home. 


“Today I wonder if this is what home is: walking somewhere where you don’t need a map. Where the landscape is laid in your heart”

Her position is precarious for this is a world in which crimes or misdemeanours result in years deducted from your predetermined time on this earth and the very last thing anyone should be doing is picking up an illegal ‘alien’ on their travels. Except that this is exactly what Mhairi does when she meets a mute child and puts her entire journey in jeopardy. 

What follows is a battle between the will for survival and the basic human qualities of love and morality because what is the point of survival if we don’t live our lives right?

The Survival Game is an astonishing story of survival, meaningfulness and morality in a world pushed to the brink by global shortages. It is also a book about layers and details, so meticulously researched that you will find yourself appreciating every bite of food you take and every, single drop of water. 

I give The Survival Game by Nicky Singer a superb five out of five stars and predict that this will be among my top five books of 2018.

The book follows fourteen-year-old Mhairi Anne Bain, originally from Scotland but relocated with her parents to Sudan at the time of the global collapse as her mother was a scientist and was working on harnessing the solar energy of the desert there. The story focus on the journey Mhairi takes to get back to the Scottish isle of Arran, where her grandmother lives.

 

At the start of the book, Mhairi is close to the Scottish border when she comes across an old man walking with a dark-skinned five-year-old boy, and the boy ends up travelling with her. Since the collapse, Scotland is now separate from the U.K. and has its own strict border controls. In order to cross borders in this world, you need papers, and these papers are considered quite valuable and you don't want others to get their hands on it.

 

The book has been written in such a way as to allow the story to slowly unravel, and with short, choppy chapters, this was a gripping and also worryingly plausible read.  The book isn’t only beautifully written, it's raw and energetic, lyrical and beautiful, intense and passionate.

The title and the cover led me to expect that this would be an action-packed thriller, but in fact it's much more than this.  Mhairi is a tough and emotionally scarred survivor,  and on her way to her grandmother across the Scottish border on the Isle of Arran.  She is initially reluctant to help the mute boy who she meets en route, but soon they form a bond, and it becomes imperative to her to get him to safety too, as they travel through a country flooded with desperate refugees.
Mhairi is a resourceful and articulate character, and her hardness make her initially hard to like, but by the end of the novel I was fighting back tears because I cared so much for her, Mo and Peter.  Whilst you could read the Survival Game purely as a thriller, it is ultimately a novel about love,  responsibility and the sort of world we want to live in.  
If I have one quibble, it's that Scotland, and Arran come out of the story looking slightly tarnished , and I had thought that Scottish islands had quite a good track record of welcoming refugees.  However, Survival Game stands as a warning for the future, and I will be recommending it to teen readers.

I agreed to give an honest review in exchange for an advance copy from net galley.

Did not finish at 63%
I'm very into post apocalyptic novels and thought that this sounded right up my alley. I was disappointed. Firstly the formatting of the ebook made it very difficult to read, I assume because of the placement of certain words in the text. (She uses the word Castle when she tries to repress certain thoughts but in ebook format it obscures the text and messes up the formatting)
Despite that taking you out of the story and the constant alluding to past events I couldn't connect with Mhari. She felt far too self possessed for someone who was so deep in denial and she had the Dawson Creek effect of using vocabulary way too advanced for someone of her age group.
I finally gave up and let her continue her journey alone.