This is one of those books that could've been fantastic - the idea is there. I absolutely love the premise of the story but was let down by the execution.

The English is very poor. I can only assume this has been translated (badly). All the missing/wrong words, issues with tense and general sentence structure greatly affected my reading experience. This really needed to be re-edited for an English audience.

The story is all tell with no show and the POV is very... strange? Max is hard to bond with and it all feels a bit jumbled.

# Seven Players is a dystopian novel. This is a first book in the series. The twists and turns make this thriller wonderful. Anything can happen at anytime.....
Thank you for the advance copy,
# Netgalley and # Adam Wodyk

Max is an actor in a world where actors are controlled by nano chips. They “sleep” through their performances and have no memory of them. But then Max’s “real life” girlfriend Lara joins the cast, the director decides that the actors should not be asleep during performances but make their own improvisational choices and only be guided by the nano chip. But then things go sideways as Max’s chip malfunctions and the fictional story becomes indistinguishable from reality.
This is an interesting premise but not really well executed though this may well be more the quality of the translation (I hope it is translated) and the lack of simple editing than it is the quality of the writing. The story starts slowly, and confusingly, and I almost gave up on it but it eventually starts to make more sense and thus becomes more interesting. As this is obviously the first in a series I would hope future instalments have a better translator and editor.

I have no idea what this was. Seven Players has one of - if not the - most sloppy plot I have ever seen. There is absolutely no sense of logic, we get hit by pointless plot twists by the dozen but none of them are connected to each other. I had a headache from reading this. The world building is so weak, the author barely takes the time to introduce you to this sci-fi futuristic world before you are thrown into this weird virtual reality concept, which in my opinion is just an excuse to hide poor writing. We are forced into this narrative that everything is a lie and everyone has hidden motives from page one, which in turns makes the main character Max an unreliable narrator. Who are we supposed to believe then? Every character has multiple sets of memories that get erased or that are stolen or that suddenly appear out of nowhere. What a freaking mess. This looks like a first draft written hastily by a 15 year-old. 90% of the book takes place in this random cave that is located god knows where, because remember the world is not fleshed out enough to give you the bigger picture. And finally the characters. I won’t even bother talking about Claudia and Lara because they are literally invisible and serve no purpose in this story. Max Stranger is not a good character. Most of his lines are whining about something or calling people scumbags, he does nothing except overreact over revelations that would make zero sense to him if he had any sense of judgement.

I'm sorry, but clearly no effort was put into writing this book and therefore I put no effort into writing this review.

This was an interesting story with a plot that just felt crazy but fit in the dystopian world. I thought that the story was a bit too slow to start, but it picked up and got interesting. I felt confused for a while until I started to understand what was happening, and then everything fell into place. I'm excited for the second book!

I really would like to say that I enjoyed my reading. The premiss was super interesting: actors with nanochips inserted in their brains and controlled to act along for a series.
I got lost between all the back and forth between reality and acting. I understand that it is kind of the point of the novel but for me it was hard to follow. Secondly, I couldn't relate to the main character. He was not really likeable and frankly I found him to be a little on the whiny side, always repeating the same thing over and over and lamenting.
After finishing the book, I came back to the credits page and read that the book was translated from polish to english and then I understood why I thought the writing was frequently grammaticaly weird. I don't know if the book was translated by a professional but it feels like it wasn't. All and all, I rapidly lost interest reading the book. I'm sure some people would actually love it but for me it wasn't a big win.
Thanks to Adam Wodyk and NetGalley for the advanced reading copy for which I am writing this honest review.

Thank you to NetGalley for providing this advanced copy to read. Thank you to the author for writing this work and others in the series.

I'm not going to lie, I was only going to give two stars until the last few chapters (mainly the last one). That's when all the "problems" of why I wasn't interested "clicked". The whole book, I really liked the plot and I loved the concept of the creatures.

***SPOILER ALERT FROM HERE ON***

My existing main complaints that still stand are:
1) I was reluctant to think that with a nanochip implanted in ones brain, that others could interpret the actors thoughts, that it wasn't obvious and initially understood that they would ALWAYS be "listening in", even when the person wasn't in actor mode. Just a little unbelievable that one would assume they were safe with their thoughts to themselves at any moment.

2) I wish that it was slower. I understand that it is already a series, and due to the fact that it was a dream that might have been the intentional vibe, but holy disjointed, fast, and confusing. All the blurred lines of if the show was on or not, the (in my opinion) super face pace from event and scene to scene, the discussion between characters telepathically, made the book less enjoyable initially because there was seemingly no purpose.

3) Due to point #2, I really felt no bond to the characters. It seemed thrown in that Lara and Claudia were sisters and suddenly Noah is their dad (?). The relationship between each of the girls was very quick and as a reader I felt no attachment to either of them.

I am hopeful in the rest of the series that more character development happens. Overall, I think that the bones of this first book are a good set up to the story. I usually love sci-fi and dystopian, but I just couldn't get into this one as much as I hoped. It could totally be just my opinion though and everyone else could love it and think I'm nuts for not getting it.

Oh wow! This book was so exciting! I don’t believe that I’ve ever read anything quite like this. This was a glorious sci-fi soap opera of a novel. I gave this book 4 stars, a solid 4 as I really did enjoy reading this.

I absolutely loved the concept of the actors basically becoming mannequins that were programmed to follow the script and while being controlled they had no knowledge of what they were up to during their time on set. This premise made me interested to continue reading because I wanted to know why this was happening and what was going to happen next.

The world building in this book was excellent. Emperial was a very dystopian world and the inhabitants were totally oblivious to what was going on. This was a little on the darker side which is to be expected from a book with dystopian nods.

The book was split into 3 pretty distinct parts which were pretty much-set up, oh goodness it’s all happening and, the fall out and explanation. I believe that each part of this book was previously published individually.

There was nothing unique or overly interesting about the main character, Max Stranger (other than him having an absolutely awesome name). Max was such a typical protagonist that he was a little dull. Fortunately the story was so strong that my interests were held. I’d have loved to have learned more about Claudia. There were some interesting background events surrounding Claudia that I’d have loved to have been elaborated on.

This book has been translated into English and there are a lot of points during the book where you can tell as there are some errors such as plurals instead of singular. This didn’t impact my ability to enjoy the book. I hope that this is the beginning of a series as I’d love to read more books set in this world, I want to know what happens next!

Thank you to NetGalley who provided me with a free ebook in exchange for an honest review

Thankyou NetGalley, BooksGoSocial and the author, Adam Wodyk, for the opportunity to read an advanced readers copy of Seven Players in exchange for an honest and unbiased opinion .
Such an interesting premise. I enjoyed the set up of this storyline. A good beginning to what promises to be an exciting series.
Can't wait for book two.
Worth a read.

I can not express enough about the plot. The plot is so interesting that you will find yourself gasping everytime you find something new. Thank you so much netgalley providing an arc!
I really like the worldbuilding, and how the author can create a world that has the capability of making us vicariously live through it. I feel like the introduction was a bit too slow-paced for me. The characters are fairly interesting.
Henceforth, it was quite a good read.