DNF at 30%

I've really liked Shusterman's work in the past, but this one really felt like the stakes were on the floor and we were just focusing on boring high school drama. I think the concept was interesting, but Blake Crouch did it much better.

Neal Shusterman just has a way of coming up with concepts no one else thinks of then executing them in a way you could never imagine! He’d shared the concept for this book when he visited our school, but the short summary cannot even capture the depth of this book. It is about more than a football player jumping into different dimensions, it is about finally realizing the privilege the main character had. There is a lot of criticism about Ash’s shifts of identity, including questioning the need to address so many issues, but it seems that Shusterman wanted to emulate true life which has so many issues. I think that the problems many have are with Ash, the MC, but it is because he is the epitome of white, cis, middle class which is frustrating in real life…

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for granting me a free advanced copy of this book to read and review.

This is a big fat NO for me.
There was so much wrong with this book. I felt like the author tried to hard to fit everything he saw wrong in the world and in doing so created the exact thing he hated.
I am a big fan of Shusterman but this is not one of the works I will ever recomend.

The premise is great, but the execution was not as successful as the Unwind or Scythe series. I will be using this title to demonstrate to our Creative Writing students.

I read this because I LOVE the Scythe series. This was a strange mix of sci-fi and realistic fiction. It deals with prejudice and diversity. It would be a good choice for those that aren’t “sci-fi” readers because the story and characters mostly revolve in a world not unlike today (in most instances).

Thank you NetGalley and the publisher for the DRC.

Shusterman does it again! This is a gripping tale with believable, interesting characters. The story is both magical and topical. Already I have placed this title in the hands of so many of my students. I highly recommend.

Didn't capture my attention and engagement. I'll hopefully try again in the future.
Didn't capture my attention and engagement. I'll hopefully try again in the future.

“[…] least I was no longer a carrier in the epidemic of ignorance.”

Our protagonist Ash comes to this conclusion (just one among many) after he experiences many different possible dimensions as a result of suffering from concussions. Shusterman has a way of making the reader think about societies’ complex issues and the difficulties involved in solving them. He doesn’t so much as preach as he does tell a story and leave it for the reader to determine their own feelings and resolutions. We know the problems exist and we are angry, yet we are left with persistent ache that it is somehow up to us to change it.

This novel isn't really science fiction, but that's the best description for it. And I'm here for it.

Ashely (Ash to everyone, since what self-respecting boy goes by Ashley these days?) is a defensive lineman. And, he's good at it. During on particular hit, it feels different though. The blood in his veins goes cold, and all of a sudden moments have passed he can't remember.

And now...all of the stop signs are blue. And they always have been.

Ash is now the sub-loc (please excuse any misspelling as I listened to this on audio). This means that when he gets hit, he has the ability to change an aspect of the way the world is.

But, as things get progressively more weird and worse, Ash needs to figure out how to get back to his world.

I would think that most people who've read Neal Shusterman before would know that when he comes out with a new book it's highly likely to be good, really good. Such was the case with Game Changer. I hadn't read the blurb so I had literally NO idea what it would be about. Imagine my surprise when I discovered it was very sports-oriented. Or should I say that sports was used to knock him from here to there and everywhere in a time-travel book in which the MC was able to see and discuss various social issues of that time and place, whenever and wherever he ended up.

What I thought was so brilliant is the way Shusterman weaved in so many social issues in what was a very unique way. As I listened (I had audio) to the issues I realized that they were talking about today and yet this was set in a different time. Issues such as racism, homophobia, abuse, and so much more. I was almost shocked at the direct comparison I was able to make to today's societal issues. Issues we should be finished with by now. I believe Shusterman to be a very good author who writes brilliant stories, and this, too, was incredibly amazing but a wee bit different. I loved it!

Game changer? More like mind changer. Brain changer. Perspective changer. World changer. This whole novel was a trip. Literally. It reminded me of Inception in the best ways. The bright contrast of colors on the cover draw your eyes in and the story draws your mind in. If you're looking for a thought provoking, dimension hopping novel, this is it.
Ash finds himself at the center of the universe literally. And it all stemmed from one major hit in a football game.
What I liked:
1. This novel makes you think. A lot. It makes your head hurt at times.
2. The fates/guides are obtuse yet intrusive. Some intervene more than others and I thought the fall out from those interventions were very creative.
3. Ash changes genders and sexual preferences throughout the time jumps/shifts/paradoxes. I feel like this is realistic and overlooked by other similarly themed novels. I love in the audiobook version that the narrators change when the gender changes.
4. How Ash adapts and slips into his new dimensions. He learns quickly and does the best he can in each new reality that he/she is faced with.
5. Ash fights to good fight. When he sees a wrong in the dimension, he seeks out ways to fix it or takes action. Imagine if everyone fought for equality the way Ash does. That would really be a game changer.

***Trigger warning: this novel depicts an abusive relationship in realistic detail.

When I first got this book I just chose it for the author....I wasn't quite sure about having a football player as the main character because sports books really aren't my thing. Neal Schusterman didn't disappoint!!! This book addresses many social topics and looks at them from a different perspective, and I think its a great way to start conversations. I would recommend this to someone who is looking for something different or out of the box.

Neal Shusterman’s Arc of a Scythe trilogy blew me away with its unique premise and brilliant writing, and so I was thrilled to dive into his newest release, Game Changer. One of my favorite things about the Arc of a Scythe series was its deft, multilayered storytelling, and Shusterman doesn’t disappoint in that department here with Game Changer.

At first Game Changer appears to be a novel about an archetypal All-American high school football player named Ash Bowman. But when Ash takes a particularly hard hit on a play during a game, it literally shakes his entire world. Blue stop signs are now the norm. Ash knows something is amiss, but most of his family and friends do not. As he maneuvers this seemingly new world, Ash begins to discover that blue stop signs are the least alarming aspect.

Finding out the impact of that single event during the football game as Ash does makes for compelling reading. What exactly is going here to cause these shifts in the world? The answer involves a sci-fi twist that I thought was well done, and I’m not much of a sci-fi reader. This book reminded me a bit of David Levithan’s excellent Every Day. As he did with Arc of a Scythe, Shusterman is so great at immersing you in a world that, sometimes very eerily, isn’t too farfetched from what we know.

The heart of this book, though, lies in its timely exploration of some of the most pressing social issues we face, including racism, homophobia, and sexism. At the beginning of the novel, the extent of Ash’s social awareness is his diverse circle of friends. As he finds himself thrown into alternate universes, his white, heterosexual male privilege becomes more and more glaringly apparent to him.

While some readers may feel that the novel tries to take on too many weighty topics at once, and granted, each of them individually could absolutely be the subject of their own book, for me the takeaway here was the overall development of Ash’s realization of just how privileged and comfortable his life was back in his original world. And although his attempts to effect sweeping change and correct the injustices he can now see more clearly are sincere, they can come off seeming a bit of a simplistic approach to extremely complex problems. On the whole, though, this is a thought-provoking read that challenges how we often view the world only through the lens of our own experiences and demonstrates the need to continue the work of truly seeing and listening to the multitude of perspectives that exist.

I think this Shusterman title is a good way to get teen boys who love football into reading science fiction. I loved the premise of an alternate reality due to a football injury and the thought-provoking concept of what football concussions are doing to our teens. The racism narrative felt clouded by the romance between Katie and Landon and I wish this topic would have been tackled differently, or more thoroughly. There are a lot of content warnings needed for this book.

I will read anything by Neal Shusterman and was so excited to start this. These books are always thought provoking and address important issues, plus the plots are unique and interesting. I did like this, the pacing was great and I stayed engaged the entire time. I think Shusterman tried to talk about too many issues and it was a bit preachy. Some of the things mentioned were abuse, racism, sexism, and homophobia. These are all important and I agreed with the messages, but it was a bit overwhelming.

Ash accidentally winds up in a cycle of changing universes where things seem to get worse with each shift. It starts with Ash dealing drugs, then escalates to segregation and a lot of racism. As Ash steps into new shoes, he does evolve and I appreciated his character development. He seemed to learn from each universe and became a better person. If everyone could see things from another person's perspective, the world would be a more accepting place for sure.

I agreed with the take on the issues the author brought up. Racism, sexism, and homophobia exist in our current world, even in small things. As a society, there's a lot we can do to end these things and everyone should stand up to injustices they witness. This is great, but it was shoved in our faces again and again and I think we could have used more plot and less messages.

Neal Shusterman has always been a favorite author of mine. That being said, this wasn’t one of my favorite books of his. Game Changer is a book about a privileged, white football player who, anytime he gets hit, falls into an alternate reality where things differ slightly from his previous realities. As the changes become increasingly significant, he soon realizes he’s in a reality where society is regressed to previous beliefs, and his perception of the world has changed completely. The football player, Ash, then takes on this heroic white guy character, trying to tell poc, women, and queer people how to solve their issues. I appreciate that Neal addresses the issues that are faced by many in the present day, but to have a privileged white male go through and act as some sort of hero for these populations just doesn’t do it for me. This one has great ideas, but poor execution. I think that everyone might take it differently, so I’d still recommend it to people, and maybe they’ll take away a different, more impactful message.

I really enjoy Neal Shusterman's writing; it's accessible for teens and enables a quick read. This novel has some issues, that it essentially has a "white savior" main character, but I appreciated all of the situations that Shusterman had his characters experience, including the main character experience being female! It was a bit more of tell, rather than show, but didn't quite go into the realm of preachy. I will book talk this title to students and I'm curious to see their reactions to this book, since it is a bit different than the other titles he's popular for in our library.

I had a hard time with this book as I felt the author attempted to tackle too many issues, and didn't succeed with any of them. He takes a straight white football player and tries to have that narrator tell us about how tough it is to be black, queer and female. It doesn't work.

Ashley ("Ash") is a football player and when he makes a tough tackle and hits his head, the universe changes. He is able to change the universe as he is the center of the world. Weird? Yeah, a bit. He relies on identical skateboarders to help him figure out what he's doing. Yet he still doesn't get it and his world changes while the world at large doesn't. It seems like this is a device to keep him learning but it's weak. He doesn't seem to be very aware of anything that isn't directly happening to him. I get that he's a 17-year-old white guy but come on.

Overall, I think the concept was interesting, but trying to integrate all of the -isms really took away from the story.

Love anything Neal Shusterman writes. This one leaves you with a lot to think about. Sadly there was a little too much violence so my district will not allow me to add it to my JH school library collection.