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[READ: February 8, 2025] The Kill Factor
My daughter brought this book home and encouraged me to read it. She said it was pretty dark and was kind of like the Hunger Games.
So I read it and I was immediately struck by how dark the book was. And then by how violent it was! This book (for teens) does not shy away from death–and violent deaths at that.
We open on a girl named Emerson. She has been arrested for arson and murder. She had robbed a school but didn’t know anyone was in the building when it caught fire. She also doesn’t believe she set the fire, but she may just be blocking out reality.
The world they live in is a few years ahead of ours (but no all that far, it seems). The currency that people use is followers on social media (no specific media is mentioned). The popular people have it all–fancy houses, medical attention, schooling. The unpopular live underground (literally under the Topsiders) and are unlikely to be able to go to college.
Emerson’s younger brother is deaf and when he needed medical attention immediately, the ambulance said they wouldn’t drive below the Topsider dividing line. She had to carry her sickly brother a pretty long way to reach a street where the ambulance would go. The kids’ father is so obsessed with getting viewers that he neglect them and everything else while trying to make his videos.
Since they had nothing, Emerson resorted to stealing. But she got caught. And she is certain to go to prison.
Until a producer shows up and offers her a chance to go on a new reality show called Redemption Island. 50 young people would be on the island, doing contests. The most popular ones at the end of the day would continue. The least popular would be imprisoned for life. At the end of the show, 49 people would be in jail for life and the last would go free. Emerson thinks this is nuts but her father has already signed off on the deal (she is bitter about that). But when her brother thinks she should do it–she should earn enough credits for them to get a lot (and for her brother to go to college) and there’s no way a game show can imprison people for life.
She agrees and boards a cruise liner with 49 other kids. They are branded with a number (and an unpleasant surprise). And soon enough they learn the truth. The punishment for losing isn’t life in prison. It is death. As in, the completions will kill you.
For instance, the first one finds all fifty kids buried alive. Those who can’t make it out don’t make it out.
Emerson has bonded with a few like-minded kids and we learn a lot about each of them and what they did to get there–although here are a few people whom we never do learn their infractions, now that I think about it.
Every night the contestants have to film a video diary to try to earn more followers. And the pretty Topsiders are way way way ahead.
The story was a pretty intense and hard to put down. It did get a little samey what with the format of the show and the relentlessness of the activities. There’s a couple of times when people rebel against the producer, which is excellent for disrupting the formula. And, as I said, the story is brutal–it is pretty explicit about people hurting themselves to earn viewers and about how violently they died (there’s no way Emerson is getting reunited with everyone at the end of the “show”).
And unlike many other stories, some of the characters we like are killed too–I mean, literally no one is safe, which makes the terror all the more real.
The ending–the last 100 or so pages just flew by. In fact, the ending may have been too fast.
And one gripe is a potential hint at a sequel (but don’t worry the book does END). I’d be curious to see what a sequel might entail–there are so many questions. But I could also see Oliver not writing one.
I haven’t read a book like this is a while and it was quite exciting.
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