Way of the Cube

Max Brooks (son of the famous comedian Mel Brooks) dabbled in acting, like his father, but ultimately settled into being a writer.  His most famous work is arguably "World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War".  While technically the film of the same name is supposed to be a movie adaptation, it has next to nothing to do the plot/characters of the book.  The audiobook, on the other hand, is a very faithful (albeit distilled) version of the novel.  Aside from some comic books, other works by Max Brooks include the "Zombie Survival Guide" (a tongue-in-cheek handbook on how to get through your typical undead apocalypse), as well as another horror novel featuring sasquatches entitled "Devolution".  The Max Brook's book I want to go over in this blogpost though is "Minecraft: The Island".

It might come as a surprise to some, but this was the first official novel to be released in a Minecraft setting.  Even more surprising is the fact that it isn't necessarily written for children.  The point of entry for the reader is the classic everyman-finds-themselves-unexpecidly-transported-to-another-world premise.  Details of the protagonist's life are left vague in no small part due to the fact that they cannot recall much from beforehand in detail.  The amnesia thing is a bit cliché and the entire concept feels a bit silly, but in a weird way Max Brooks makes it work by playing the situation completely straight (literally the first page reads "The following is based on true events").  Having no foreknowledge of their current predicament, the protagonist of "The Island" finds themselves in a rather difficult survival situation as they try to unravel the often twisted logic of how things work in Minecraft.  Examples include basics like punching wood and floating blocks to eternally burning torches and the classic newcomer mistake of trying to water crops directly with a bucket.  Struggling to learn the myriad of Minecraft recipes on a 2-by-2 or 3-by-3 grid is also covered in significant detail...it's a strange story, but one that is very true to the source material.

Each chapter of the book is short and centered around the protagonist learning something important - pearls (or perhaps I should say "cubes") of wisdom that the reader might find meaningful beyond the scope of Minecraft.  Overall, the vibe I got from "The Island" was a Robinson Caruso self-help book in the style of Andy Weir's "The Martian".  In more general terms, it's a memoir about enduring against the odds.