Preview

Prime logo Prime members: New to Audible?
Get 2 free audiobooks during trial.
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
Premium Plus auto-renews for $14.95/mo after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

The Dying Game

By: Asa Avdic
Narrated by: Cassandra Campbell, Mark Deakins, Steve West
Try for $0.00

$14.95/month after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

Buy for $15.75

Buy for $15.75

Pay using card ending in
By confirming your purchase, you agree to Audible's Conditions of Use and Amazon's Privacy Notice. Taxes where applicable.

Publisher's summary

A masterly locked-room mystery set in a near-future Orwellian state.

The year is 2037, and on the tiny island of Isola, seven people have been selected to compete in a 48-hour test for a top-secret intelligence position with the totalitarian Union of Friendship. One of them is Anna Francis, a workaholic bureaucrat with a nine-year-old daughter she rarely sees and a secret that haunts her. Her assignment: to stage her own death and then to observe, from her hiding place inside the walls of the house, how the six other candidates react to the news that a murderer is among them. Who will take control? Who will crack under pressure? But then a storm rolls in, the power goes out, and the real game begins....

Combining suspense, unexpected twists, psychological gamesmanship, and a sinister dystopian future, The Dying Game conjures a world in which one woman is forced to ask, "Can I save my life by staging my death?"

©2017 Asa Avdic (P)2017 Penguin Audio
activate_Holiday_promo_in_buybox_DT_T2

Critic reviews

“A deliciously creepy novel revolving around a terrific paradigm shift: The job you think you’re doing? That’s not the job you’re really doing.” (Chris Pavone, New York Times best-selling author of The Expats)

“Agatha Christie meets George Orwell in journalist Avdic’s unsettling first novel.... Avdic not only constructs a fascinating and original plot but makes her imagined reality chillingly plausible.” (Publishers Weekly, starred review)

“A high-stakes test of survival and betrayal . . . Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None crossed-pollinated with The Most Dangerous Game.... An unsettling portrait of our possible future.” (Kirkus Reviews)

What listeners say about The Dying Game

Average customer ratings
Overall
  • 3.5 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    11
  • 4 Stars
    12
  • 3 Stars
    9
  • 2 Stars
    4
  • 1 Stars
    2
Performance
  • 4.5 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    23
  • 4 Stars
    7
  • 3 Stars
    2
  • 2 Stars
    1
  • 1 Stars
    1
Story
  • 3.5 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    11
  • 4 Stars
    7
  • 3 Stars
    9
  • 2 Stars
    5
  • 1 Stars
    1

Reviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.

Sort by:
Filter by:
  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Couldn’t stop listening

Fabulous novel, really well plotted, fascinating characters. Great to listen to on audio. I highly recommend it!

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

2 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    3 out of 5 stars

Starts Slow

This is a strange book that took me a little while to begin enjoying. The novel breaks roughly into three parts. The first sets the groundwork for the story—a woman is asked to help test candidates for a very important project by pretending to be the victim of a murder. She will then, from hiding, evaluate them to determine how to deal with the stress of thinking that one of their fellow candidates is a murderer.

The second part is that plot, which quickly takes a “And Then There Was One” turn as more people die or disappear from the island. Nothing is as it seems and no one knows who to trust.

The third part is a series of interrogations in which authorities attempt to discover what really happened. This was easily the best part of the novel. The interrogations are very well done and Audic really brings out the different personalities of the people being questioned. Over the course of the interrogations and a very brief final chapter, onion skin after onion skin constantly gets pulled away, changing everything the reader thinks they know about what’s going on.

It's often tense and there are moments of true excitement. The ending definitely surprised me.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    2 out of 5 stars

Potential

So much potential. So much back and forth and confusion. I never did understand the world, the referenced war, and more. It could have been something a lot more enjoyable.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

  • Overall
    1 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    1 out of 5 stars

boring and slow

I stopped reading after I was 75% done with the book. I realized I didn't care about the plot or any of the characters. too much time is spent on how Anna feels about things. maybe it all comes to fruition in the last part of the book but why bother continuing to read such a boring book?

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

  • Overall
    2 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    1 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    3 out of 5 stars

A confusing story with no real endooint

this was very confusing...
not what the blurb promised

characters. they're written in an ok manner.
but the going back and forth shows the author create a false sense of urgency and plot.

the prose was mostly clunky. It had parts where it was ok written. Most of the time it was evodent this writer is still new to writing and at times it was downright confusing and poor.

The plot was what granbed me but it was soon shown it wasn't well thought out with a mediocre ending.

The pacing was horrible and made worse by the horrible audio quality. At times the novem was repetitive and made worse when the audio perdon repeated 40 minutes. Like huh???


I do not like the forward and backwards in time dynamic.

It was ok.... I wouldn't really recommend it. Maybe if it was free i guess u can give it a shot.

Didn't spend money on this.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!