FantasticLand is... Kinda Fantastic

It's not often I start a book that I know absolutely nothing about. I hadn't heard any buzz, it didn't appear on any book lists and I hadn't seen a single copy in a bookshop. The only thing it had going for it was that it appeared in the Audible Plus catalogue under 'horror' at the exact moment I was looking for a free horror audiobook.

Mike Bockoven's FantasticLand is the story of a theme park roughly the same size as Disney World. Like Disney, it's a family institution with distinct themed 'lands' (Pirate Cove, Fairy Prairie, Circus World, etc).

The story begins with a record-breaking hurricane that takes out several states. Things begin well, with FantasticLand almost over-prepared. The park is quickly evacuated, leaving only three-hundred volunteers to stay in the bunkers and secure the park in the aftermath - for a significant pay bonus. 

After poor management and a blackout leads to the first (seemingly) accidental fatalities, the now shaken staff emerge to discover FantasticLand cut off from the outside world, but otherwise in decent shape. The overwhelmed Red Cross is frantically triaging help to millions and since they are assured that the trapped staff at FantasticLand have plentiful food, first-aid and shelter, they are bumped down the list for six whole weeks.   

When the help finally arrives, they find a scene from a horror movie. Bodies hang from lamp-posts, heads are on spikes, and the remaining survivors have broken down into warring factions based on the themed zones. Over a hundred people, one third of the staff who stayed behind, are dead.

In-universe, FantasticLand goes on to be a true-crime junkie's dream, with a nation obsessed with finding out what made ordinary, privileged young people go full-on Lord of the Flies. The book is a series of interviews with people connected to FantasticLand - from the creation of the park and it's unique set-up, to the storm, and the breakdown of order that followed. People who were there - often deeply traumatised - talk of the violence they saw and committed. 

Because of its conceit as a series of interviews (and we never interview the same person twice) the writer is afforded quite a lot of freedom. They have twenty-plus potentially unreliable narrators, and never have to confirm or deny facts one way or the other. Did the manager actually kill the girl who was questioning his authority during the blackout? Is the leader of the pirates a true psychopath, or did the death of his brother in the shelter trigger his behaviour? Are the mysterious people in pig masks serial killers, tricksters, or figments of the imagination?

The text has fun with it it's unreliability too - having built The Circus Freaks up as monstrous cannibals, their leader's banal story of theatre kid trickery is welcome comic relief, and one of the best interviews in the book. Even then, his fervent insistence that - by having the most survivors and spilling the least amount of blood - The Circus Freaks 'won' proves that none of the survivors will ever mentally leave the park.

Unfortunately you also can sense the author's fear that the audience will not be able to suspend their disbelief. He works to make the park feel as real as possible, and every interview is full of 'I know this sounds like a movie' defensiveness. After a while it's too self-aware. It also means that we are very tightly tied to unpicking the series of events in the park and are rarely allowed a broader picture. 

For me at least, that lack of a broader picture was where it fell down. I was more than willing to suspend my disbelief over theme park employees turning on each other, and have it be an unsolvable mystery like other real-world cult tragedies. Instead, the author constantly has the interviewees theorise as to why it happened, but never interviews anyone who might give real answers (clearly feeling no one reads a horror book for psychological theory). If I had to hear one more suggestion that 'lack of social media' was to blame, my eye-rolling muscles might have been forever injured. Even worse, it's vaguely mentioned that other communities affected by the hurricane experienced similar violence, which raises even more unanswered questions. 

At its core, this book is trapped between two mediums. The standard horror novel, and the true-crime format. The detailed technical introduction to the park, foreshadowing a corporate disaster, probably bores horror readers before they begin, and the quick ending once the violence is over will leave true-crime fans dissatisfied. The influence of World War Z (which is an oral history of a zombie apocolpyse and doesn't involve a single person who could be played by Brad Pitt) is very clear. But World War Z fits more cleanly into the horror genre and didn't have to worry about an aftermath, because the entire book is about the aftermath. 

This needed more aftermath. For a book in which people die through (provable!) corporate neglect and actual violence, we only get one interview with a lawyer. He is basically a state prosecutor, overwhelmed and covering his political ass. Only a handful go to prison, and most cases went unproven (one 'Pirate' is gleefully free to talk about violence he committed, since he's made an undisclosed 'deal'). The true-crime junkie in me wanted to unpick the legal fallout, the civil cases, the media interest, the trauma... but at this point the book simply wraps up. 

It's like it got bored the moment the Pirate/Shop Girl sword fight ended... and as I type the words 'Pirate/Shop Girl sword fight' even I feel like a swot for asking to see the receipts.   

That said, I still consider FantasticLand one of my favourite books this year - partly because I fall in the zenn diagram of 'true-crime fan' and 'horror fan', so the majority of the book was satisfying for me. It's tense, full of interesting characters, and its flaws don't stop it being an incredibly fun, exciting read. I think it would make a great movie, or podcast. 

It's just a shame, because it could have been truly fantastic in another medium.