Mark's Epic Blog of Randomness

 By Mark Rodriguez I saw this book in the book store several years ago and decided to pick it up, curious about the premise. It's a good read, but I had no idea that it was a companion piece to Battle Royale, a series that already had its own manga series (now out of print), a movie and a novel. This is basically Hunger Games but with a somewhat school setting. In a dystopian future pretty similar to modern day Japan, every year a randomly chosen class of 9th graders are taken on what they think is a field trip, but are actually kidnapped and forced to play this game in an island. Everyone will have to kill each other until one remains, and they all wear collars that detect their every move. If they choose to disobey and not kill anyone within 24 hours, the collars will explode and kill everyone at once. The kids are given some rations and random weapons. The only problem is that the weapons can be anything from a gun to a hammer... giving whoever has the hammer no choic...