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    Gauntlet
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    Gauntlet
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    Gauntlet
    Audiobook13 hours

    Gauntlet

    Written by Holly Jennings

    Narrated by Erin Spencer

    4.5/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this audiobook

    Plug back into the dangerous world of virtual gaming, in the next thrilling novel from the author of Arena.

    Kali Ling has faced down death hundreds of times for the entertainment of millions. She knows fear-and she knows what's truly terrifying...

    There's a new game in town. A brutal, winner-takes-all, international video game tournament showcasing the world's most elite players, promising fame, prestige, and unbelievable fortune. But there's a catch. The game uses new VR pods guaranteed to push digital warriors to their physical and psychological brink-adapting every time a gamer makes a move.
     
    As the first female captain and youngest team owner in VGL history, Kali is used to defying the odds. But as the all-star tournament heats up, her determination begins to waver and the pressures of media, sponsors, and the game itself begin to put cracks in her hard-set convictions-and strain on her relationship with the one person who matters most.
     
    If Kali and her teammates are to survive, they'll have to find a way to be stronger than ever before. But battling the system may prove too difficult for even the most hardened of fighters...


    From the Trade Paperback edition.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPenguin Random House Audio
    Release dateApr 4, 2017
    ISBN9781524756505
    Unavailable
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    Reviews for Gauntlet

    4.5/5

    11 ratings5 reviews

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    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 5/5
      In this second book in the Arena series, Kali Ling has become the youngest team owner and taken the rest of her team with her. Now she has to deal with sponsors, images, and managing her friends. There is a new tournament forming with a brand-new technology and only 32 teams are being invited to play.Kali and her team are chosen to take part. But, even before the first match, Rooke falls off the wagon and has a failing drug test which she has to report which opens Rooke up to public scrutiny. It seems like each day the members of the team become the victim of rumor. The paparrizi are on them much more than the other teams. After losing their first match, they need to come back through the loser's bracket. The new technology is quite an advancement. It seems to learn each time the team does something which makes the game progressively harder to win. In fact, the technology seems to be deliberately playing on the fears of Kali's team. I am not a gamer but I really enjoyed getting into the minds of gamers and learning what keeps them playing. I thought the virtual world was fascinating and the stresses placed on these competitive gamers seemed realistic to me. I liked the way Kali lost track for a while about why she loves gaming as she was buried under the business of running a team. I also liked the way she chose to deal with the problem once she recognized it. Fans of video games will be a great audience for this fast-paced adventure.
    • 4/5
      I'd never read a book by Eoin Colfer, but I knew of his teenish books, still, I wasn't sure if I'd like it. Although I have really liked the Middle Grade books that Marvel/Disney has started writing for the heroes.I wondered how he would get the Tony character, right or wrong, etc. And I thought that for the most part he got the characterizations pretty well spot on.Tony is on his way to an environtmental conference, chatting with his suit's AI Friday when everything goes topsy turvey. He winds up being kidnapped by a teenager and then gets pulled into an evil plot hatched by the Mandarin. It also involves the environmental summitt as well as the Iron Man Suit, just not with Tony in it.The Mandarin takes on Tony one on one a couple of times and that was sorta interesting, and of course Tony also has to figure out how to save all those who are at the summitt.In his travels he meets many interesting people while lurching around the UK and they were all awesomely and uniquely written.The story even had some twists and turns that I didn't see coming. And there were interesting connections with both comics and the movies, although it also didn't how to just one of the Universes. It was its own Universe, which was cool.It was a pretty awesome YAish comic novel, and I do hope that maybe Colfer will do another book in the Marvel Universe.I got this advanced galley through Netgalley on behalf of Disney Book Group
    • 5/5
      Team Defiance is invited to an international tournament where the game is more than what it seems. New technology has brought gaming one step further. As players experience the game, it can learn from them and up the difficulty level in a heartbeat. Defiance will have to learn new skills to conquer both the game and their opponents. But as Defiance struggles in game, Kali Ling must learn how to fight back against the pressures of being a team owner.Having bought Team Defiance, Kali is determined to give them a better life. She refuses to force them into publicity stunts and hardcore partying. She won't cover up drug tests and hide the fact that addiction is a risk all gamers must face. When one of her teammates relapses, the gossip magazines take hold and begin to tear down the members of Defiance. Sponsors threaten to abandon the team. The public takes their darkest secrets and twists them into hate. Assaulted from all sides, the team begins to break under the pressure. Kali must hold them together and find a way to overcome the challenges surrounding them.Once again Holly Jennings has created a novel that is much more than just a story about gaming. With fame comes immense pressure to be in the public eye. I don't think people take into account how it affects a person, and the insecurities it can cause. Each of the Defiance team members will have to conquer their inner demons to make it through the game.Gauntlet will also venture into the darker parts of drug relapse. Jennings shows how it affects not only the person addicted but the people around them as well. Readers will see the rollercoaster of emotions addiction causes. There is a constant hidden battle to avoid temptation. With the type of lifestyle professional gamers live, that temptation is right in front of their eyes.I want more of this world that Jennings has created. I don't want the story to end at Gauntlet. I hope in the future she will release the next part of Team Defiance's story. There is so much more left to tell.
    • 5/5
      WOW I honestly don't know where to start!!! I loved this even more than the first book. I wish I could give it more stars. Kali is such a strong female protagonist, but she's still human. The struggles she and the team face feel real, and the fight scenes are vivid and immersive. The ending had me crying because it was over, and I wanted more!

      Advance Review Copy
    • 4/5
      Never have I seen a second novel in a series so completely outdo the first in nearly every way. I'll be honest here. I probably wouldn’t have picked up Gauntlet by Holly Jennings if the publisher hadn’t sent me a digital copy. I found Arena, the first book in the series, disappointing. I could see the potential within the novel and desperately wanted to love it, but found it fell short of the mark. I was hesitant to start reading Gauntlet.It is immediately obvious that author has grown as a writer. Gauntlet is an exciting, suspenseful, near future sci-fi that will have you rooting for Kali and Team Defiance all the way. I am eagerly awaiting the next book in the series. Because dear lord, people, that cliffhanger!Nearly all of my gripes with the first book are addressed and fixed in this one. Not all of them, maybe. There were one or two things which still bothered me a bit, and one was most definitely mentioned in my review of the previous book.While the first book follows Kali as she struggles with overcoming addiction, the sudden death of her boyfriend and teammate, and winning the RAGE tournament, this one takes a bit of a different turn. Kali is now owner of her own team, Defiance, which she is still acting captain of. Now Kali has new problems – how to pay her teammates and employees, how to please the sponsors, how to deal with a teammates relapse, all while staying true to her beliefs and attempts to clean up the pro-gaming circuit. On top of that, there’s a new type of immersion pod directed by an advanced AI instead of real people at real terminals and a new surprise tournament the inventors are hosting. Team Defiance will now have to compete against the best teams in the world, including Kali’s role model.The stakes feel much higher in this book. The scope moves from solely on Kali and her own very personal struggles to the team at large and how her actions affect her friends and the gaming community at large. The stakes are higher. There’s a lot more on the line than Kali’s health or dignity or even the success of the team within the tournament. There are very real enemies Kali must fight. But these aren’t the sort of villains we have in, say, high fantasy. There is no Sauron to destroy here. Instead, we have a press intent on destroying their reputation, corrupt tournament officials who would rather see Kali and her principles out of the league than change their own morals and standards, and an AI that seems to be somehow targeting Team Defiance. Things that have no visible beginning or end. Things that can’t be fought the way that Kali and her team fight their enemies while in-game.Something that bothered me about the first book was that it didn’t feel as if the story was set quite as far in the future as it was. There were very little indications that the world was much different than it is now. Gauntlet felt much more sci-fi than Arena. While not included in any sort of overabundance, it was obvious that Kali doesn’t live in the world of today, or even the next handful of years. This helped make the world feel more real, like it really was forty years in the future where the dreams of today are finally being realized while still having some stubborn holdover tech from today.Now, one of the biggest issues I had with the first book was the presentation of the game itself. Standard gaming features were missing. There was no menu system, among other things. While there still doesn’t seem to be any way for the players to manually log themselves out of the game, which sounds both terrifying and potentially problematic, some of these issues are addressed with the new version of total immersion pods introduced here. The handling of things by an AI not only makes the game more interesting as a viewer (and readers), but takes out some of the inherent problems with using real flesh and blood coders to create in-game enemies and scenarios in real time as Kali and the others are plugged in as well. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. Programmers aren’t gods. They can’t magic a scenario and enemies with a few quick strokes of a keyboard all while monitoring the player’s condition and needs. Using the AI cuts out the vast majority of these issues. While it doesn’t seem apparent that there is any way to log out of the game short of dying, the AI does improve the game.The other characters were also more prevalent here. In the last book the characters seen the most were Kali, obviously, since the series is from her point of view, and Rooke. Here, we get a lot more time with the rest of the team. It’s nice to see these characters developed a bit more. None of them seemed as thin or one dimensional as they did in the first book. Each of them struggles with their own demons. They all have pasts, hobbies, and lives and personalities outside of gaming and Team Defiance. Interpersonal relations suffer and are reforged throughout the novel. It isn't just Kali struggling this time. Its all of them.Despite all of this happening at once, the pacing never suffers. We see more of the characters interact without the action stopping altogether to do so. There is more focus on Kali’s teammates and their struggles, but we never stop to, say, switch points of view. Everything is viewed through Kali’s eyes, both as a friend and as team owner. She gets involved when she must, either with a shoulder to lean on as a friend or as an owner when she has to put her foot down on a matter. It’s a thin line between friendship and boss she straddles and, though it is apparent she doesn’t know what she’s doing, she does it with a fervor that is very admirable.I honestly didn’t think I’d say this, but I really enjoyed Gauntlet by Holly Jennings. It was fun. There was a palatable sense of suspense. In-game fights were quick, brutal, and fun to read. I am beyond ecstatic that so much of the potential I saw in the author as a freelance editor was more fully realized in this novel. If you were just meh about Arena, pick up Gauntlet, and I promise you that you’ll be pleasantly surprised. If you like YA novels, especially YA sci-fi, you should pick up this series. If you don’t like YA novels or don’t like books with video game related plots this might not be the book for you.