Minecraft

A castaway is stranded on an island with no memory of who he is; with only the animals for company. But it gets weirder: this world is completely made out of blocks, and there seem to be infinite rules on what he specifically can and can't do. At night, the monsters come out and attack this poor castaway, and he is desperate to find a renewable source of food, stay sane, and survive. He must learn valuable life lessons if he is to do this.

The cool thing about this book, which, incidentally, is the first Minecraft novel published officially by Mojang, is that the book doesn't really say it's set in Minecraft. The title has the word Minecraft in it, but to the character, this is just a strange island that he doesn't know a thing about. I like those kind of books - where the reader knows something but the character doesn't. This book is really good in the fact that it has a lot of life lessons. Each chapter basically teaches one - and at the end of the book, there's a list of 35 lessons. You could think of this as 'Minecraft's Fables' (not really).

I do like the concept, though. It's retelling the classic Minecraft adventure in Survival Mode: you spawn, you get wood, upgrade to stone, fight off monsters, go mining, grow food, breed animals, and build a house or a base. But this book takes the story deeper by putting it in the perspective of someone instead. I can really feel the character's desperation at times to survive or get off the island, and also his excitement when he discovers something new and amazing that he can do. In all, this book is an amazing survival story that deserves to sit right next to Robinson Crusoe and Treasure Island.