When your first novel becomes the inspiration for a hit television series, you know you’re onto something big. John Dixon’s PHOENIX ISLAND is a bit of mutt- part YA story, part adult horror/scifi. However, it’s 100% great. Of course, readers will always tell viewers that the book trumps the show/movie and it is no different in this case but then again, the show only uses Dixon’s novel as a springboard. Good move, since they would likely screw it up!
A challenge here to readers. Try not to finish it in a night or two. The pacing is that strong and the story moves faster than the main character’s fists. It took about six hours total for me to hit the back cover in consecutive nights.
Why so addicting and quick?
Sixteen-year-old Carl Freeman is your not so typical bad boy. He is the champion of the bullied and thus, becomes the ultimate underdog. Yet in doing so, he bounces from foster home to juvie facilities to court on his way to the worst sentence possible – a two year stint on Phoenix Island. This boot camp/prison style camp that promises to reinvent him. How so? Stay tuned and find out but his future awaits in the “Chop Shop” in the hands of a sadistic doctor.
Carl befriends more underdogs on the island, diminutive smart-ass Ross and beautiful but mysterious Octavia, both of whom he feels ready to defend with all he’s got.
Phoenix Island, of course, is much more than a camp/prison/re-education facility. The darkness it holds in the secrets of the jungle, tortuous solitary box, and campers who “graduate” off of the island.
The “Old Man” who both helps and guides Carl into a devious plan for his own design is as complex as the main character as are several others, thus creating a plot that twists and turns organically while drawing in the reader as he or she begins to root for each underdog to emerge victorious, a good guy, or simply alive.
Dixon appears to have a long career ahead of him if PHOENIX ISLAND is any indication. It’s been compared to “Lord of the Flies,” “Wolverine,” and a military version of “The Hunger Games” but is both all and none of them in its originality.
Recommended as the book you will likely spend the least amount of time reading but most time thinking about afterwards.
Maybe a film version wouldn’t be bad afterall.
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