Robert Kingett reviewed Game Changer by Neal Shusterman
Comforting personal journey
4 stars
I may be in the minority here when I say that I don't really care if white authors are writing "woke books." If it seems shallow to one person, it may seem deep to others.
Before I begin, I should say this book tackles a lot of heavy subjects. The protagonist becomes gay. That will become apparent when you read the book, and, while it may come across as insincere preaching to some, I honestly believe the author put Ash, the protagonist, through their own personal woke journey the author went through.
It's because I thought the author was honestly sincere in his racism 101 and homofobia 101 that I enjoyed this book and, quite frankly, I really enjoyed Ash's growth.
Ash gets hit on the American football field one day and gets knocked into a parallel universe, and bounces from universe to universe. The universes all take place in …
I may be in the minority here when I say that I don't really care if white authors are writing "woke books." If it seems shallow to one person, it may seem deep to others.
Before I begin, I should say this book tackles a lot of heavy subjects. The protagonist becomes gay. That will become apparent when you read the book, and, while it may come across as insincere preaching to some, I honestly believe the author put Ash, the protagonist, through their own personal woke journey the author went through.
It's because I thought the author was honestly sincere in his racism 101 and homofobia 101 that I enjoyed this book and, quite frankly, I really enjoyed Ash's growth.
Ash gets hit on the American football field one day and gets knocked into a parallel universe, and bounces from universe to universe. The universes all take place in current times, so I am wondering why this book is classified as science fiction rather than historical fiction.
Each universe is a universe based on historical events For instance, there is a world where stop signs are blue instead of red. There's a connected world where segregated schools is a law of the land in 2021. I'd think that would be more historical fiction, than science fiction.
This book is a personal journey. If you're a plot reader, this book may not be for you. Ash, the main character, figuratively wakes up to the many things he was completely blind to before. Ash didn't listen, which makes his internal monologues believable and very sincere.
At first, I wondered why Asexuality wasn't examined in this book, but then I remembered that Ash had a lot of growing up to do in this book, so feel the author did well with the subjects he tackled.
One note about the audiobook narration. The white narrator does not try to do a Black voice. I am extremely thankful for this, but it does get quite hard to listen to long stretches of Dialog between Ash and Leo without dialog tags.
All in all, this book won't fix racism, and it won't shed some new light on a subject if you're well versed in these topics. But a very good thing about books is we can watch others grow. Even if one person wakes up, that's progress. We need more books that demonstrate progress rather than promise progression.