Rating: 
Summary: Smart and Speedy
Review: A new door for fans of intrigue has been deftly and intelligently opened. Game theory (as exemplified by the well-known Prisoners Dilemma) as a backdrop for a novel is unique and refreshing. And MacDonald is a great writer. His choice of writing the book in first person, rather unusual for a thriller, was a good one because readers can really get into the main character's head as the mind games unfold and explode. The settings are fun - delightfully sunny African beaches and dusty stoic Oxford brick. Fast-paced and memorable.
Rating:
Summary: A Thriller about Brain Manipulations
Review: Ben Ashurst was living a peaceful life as a student at Oxford University until he meet a famous investigator who offered him to participate in a research - as a volunteer human guinea pig - bases in emotions and reactions but what he never expected was that his trip to Kenya ended in a nightmare and back in England an almost persecution mania because of situations given to study his reactions and feelings without his knowledge and consent. These limit situations make him angry and curious and start investigating until the find out the real purpose and the brains behind the project. This is a very psychological thriller in which the reader have to pay attention to every dialogue to follow the sequences of the experiment and Ben?s emotional responses to the manipulation and the second thoughts of the researchers.
Rating:
Summary: A Thriller about Brain Manipulations
Review: Ben Ashurst was living a peaceful life as a student at Oxford University until he meet a famous investigator who offered him to participate in a research - as a volunteer human guinea pig - bases in emotions and reactions but what he never expected was that his trip to Kenya ended in a nightmare and back in England an almost persecution mania because of situations given to study his reactions and feelings without his knowledge and consent. These limit situations make him angry and curious and start investigating until the find out the real purpose and the brains behind the project. This is a very psychological thriller in which the reader have to pay attention to every dialogue to follow the sequences of the experiment and Ben's emotional responses to the manipulation and the second thoughts of the researchers.
Rating:
Summary: Deception that dazzles!
Review: For mystery lovers, thrill-seekers, conspiracy theorists, and of course, game theory wunderkind, The Mind Game provides tantalizing and hypnotic reading. This is the kind of page-turner that begs to be added to college literature class lists everywhere--and that demands a second reading even before the first is through.
The hero, an Oxford student under the tutelage of a genius professor of game theory (and psychology and medicine and neurobiology, etc)is subject and object of a strange experiment. Through the travesty of a love affair, a life-threatening chase, horrific treachery and a landscape of trendy class-conscious Oxbridgians with more time and money than sense, the experience is compelling.
Don't be misled by the confusion of this review. While the scope of the story is immense, the timing, rythm and syntax are so smoothe that it reads like Harold Robbins -- fast, easy and fluid. But I was a bit vertigal at the end anyway! Own this -- buy one for your friends (the ones you respect).
Rating:
Summary: Deception that dazzles!
Review: For mystery lovers, thrill-seekers, conspiracy theorists, and of course, game theory wunderkind, The Mind Game provides tantalizing and hypnotic reading. This is the kind of page-turner that begs to be added to college literature class lists everywhere--and that demands a second reading even before the first is through.
The hero, an Oxford student under the tutelage of a genius professor of game theory (and psychology and medicine and neurobiology, etc)is subject and object of a strange experiment. Through the travesty of a love affair, a life-threatening chase, horrific treachery and a landscape of trendy class-conscious Oxbridgians with more time and money than sense, the experience is compelling.
Don't be misled by the confusion of this review. While the scope of the story is immense, the timing, rythm and syntax are so smoothe that it reads like Harold Robbins -- fast, easy and fluid. But I was a bit vertigal at the end anyway! Own this -- buy one for your friends (the ones you respect).
Rating: 
Summary: Reads like a movie pitch; convuluted plot goes nowhere.
Review: I expected an intelligent thriller. If you read the author's credentials, you'd expect to encounter some real meat embedded in the story. I was tantalized as the characters discussed game theory, but in no more depth than a sidebar in "Scientific American." Without content to sustain me, I waited for the implausible and utterly predictable plot -- complete with 'twists' -- to keep me engaged. I was disappointed. More than anything, this book wants to be a mainstream action/thriller movie. It reads like a script turned into a manuscript. Its dialogue, plot points, and characterizations are each so carefully introduced and easy to grasp that the whole thing had a "made for television" feel. As a book, I found it clumsy at best. Awkward. Was the author afraid of being too "bright" for his audience? Was he afraid that with such a large cast of characters we needed extraordinary hand-holding to "get" him? I don't know. But I wouldn't recommend this book for anyone who's looking for something polished or challenging. Maybe it will be a movie one day. I'd definitely see it matinee.
Rating:
Summary: Pleasure!
Review: I must admit I usually don't have the patience to read books, but this one was so gripping and captivating, I even read it during work :-) Even if I predicted some of the twists, it was a pure pleasure. plus an interesting thinking of emotions control, something which never occurred to me. I wish the end had been a bit more romantic, not so cold. Even if a little love confession (another one) from Ben to Cara. Well, I guess the fact the book ended with 6 times the sentence "I love Cara" is a close enough... I really liked that Cara character, even though from some point I did not believe a word she said.
Thanks to the author for the great pleasure of reading the book. Well done!
Rating:
Summary: Fabulous
Review: MacDonald may be one of the best storytellers I've ever read, especially for a first time novelist. Tightly blending story, science and game theory "The Mind Game" is a masterfully plotted piece that moves along so fast you feel like you're being dragged, but not so fast that you feel you're being left behind and lost. The intricacies of Ben's efforts to untangle the layers of deceit that are woven around him are stimulating and in a word, fabulous.
Rating: 
Summary: Truman goes to Africa: You've seen the movie, read the book!
Review: Old Etonian Macdonald recirculates "The Truman Show" with less technology and more chat: notching it down on the scale, adding a bit of third world ambiance and neo-colonial acts of penance. It's all a game, and very clever too to be published so wide - in a sense a disappointment; and not quite as good as a similar work from a different era, "Decline and Fall". Both works deal with an undergraduate having a hard time indeed by the forces of the world - the Bollingden Club becomes Macdonald's puppetmaster tutor; Pennyfeather mutates; and Lady Metroland becomes a kind of aggressive dark lady who similarly deals with "a sensitive race" on Ugandan terms. One just wished that it had been Balliol instead of Merton as no doubt the text would have been cleverer. "The Truth Machine" is intellectually a more satisfying work and does the job better if one wants to throw out an analogy. Then again we shall see when the inevitable film is made. I'd say it was a fun work for involving running simulations in real-time - though frankly Huysman's decadent "Against Nature" takes you on a wittier jaunt with slightly less hands-on cannibalism. At least it's not Martin Amis.
Rating: 
Summary: Exciting medical thriller
Review: Oxford researcher and instructor James Fieldhead leads a team on a field experiment centering on better understanding of human emotions. James enlists his student Ben Ashurst to serve as a guinea pig to test a new device in a luxurious resort in Kenya. To encourage Ben to come, James allows him to bring along his girlfriend Cara on this all expense paid for "holiday." Initially, Ben enjoys the vacation of a lifetime. However, the experiment begins to place him in danger and fear as to what will be the next twist. He turns paranoid, trusting no one including his mentor and his girlfriend. When the experiment is completed, Ben retains his anger and rage, feeling unfairly used and with a need to know whom is really behind the game he just played and lost and what is the ultimate victory. THE MIND GAME is an exciting medical thriller that is at its top game when the story line revolves around modern psychology theory. As the plot veers from neurology and game theory into the chaos of a typical thriller's cat and mouse chase, it loses some momentum as the audience struggles with a loss of reality. In his debut Hector MacDonald has shown he can entertain and educate his audience with a great intelligent psychological thriller, but needs to show he has the endurance to stick to his prime plot without adding unnecessary gimmicks that spins away from a winner. This book is still worth reading as one of the better sub-genre entries in quite awhile. Harriet Klausner
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