Book #98 of 2021:

Game Changer by Neal Shusterman

Overall, this YA novel strikes me as a well-meaning but clumsy effort to awaken its audience to societal problems like racism and homophobia that may not affect them directly. It specifically feels aimed at young, straight, white, male jocks like its hero, who suffers a brain injury on the football field and finds himself changing reality to create parallel worlds where he is less privileged in a variety of ways (even while being assured by his pandimensional guides that he is now literally the center of the universe).

Again, I think I get what author Neal Shusterman is going for with this walk-a-mile-in-someone-else’s-shoes business, but it plays out more as marginalization tourism: I’ve made myself gay and now I understand how hard it is to be gay! I’ve made myself a girl and now I understand how hard it is to be a girl! If the narrative had limited itself to just one of these shifts to explore in-depth that might have been meaningful, but as written, it’s difficult to accept that the protagonist is learning anything at all from the experience. It seems like a missed opportunity to discuss body dysmorphia and other trans issues too, although maybe that’s for the best given how poorly-executed the story is overall.

Speaking of odd gaps: this title came out in February 2021, and though I can’t tell when it’s supposed to be set (or when the writing was finished), it’s the first piece of fiction I’ve seen in an explicitly post-COVID period, where the pandemic is referenced as a thing of the past. Yet I can detect no lasting influence on mask behaviors, outdoor options, social distancing, remote work and school opportunities, etc., which feels strange to me. The writer could have placed his tale in a nebulous timeframe and not included the disease at all, but mentioning it opens a door that he does not appear to have particularly thought through.

Finally, I simply have a tough time with the fact that this kid’s special ability is triggered by getting struck hard in the head, which he then willfully repeats again and again throughout the text. I wouldn’t say it’s necessarily glamorizing that sort of physical trauma, but at a bare minimum it’s irresponsibly downplaying the very real danger of CTE in violent sports. Like the flaws above, that suggests a work that may hold promise as an early draft but should probably not have been allowed to reach publication in this present state.

[Content warning for domestic abuse, whitesplaining, racial profiling, segregation — yes, he undoes Brown v. Board of Education at one point — gaslighting, and forced outing.]

★★☆☆☆

–Subscribe at https://patreon.com/lesserjoke to support these reviews and weigh in on what I read next!–

Find me on Patreon | Goodreads | Blog | Twitter