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    Phoenix Island
    Phoenix Island
    Phoenix Island
    Audiobook12 hours

    Phoenix Island

    Written by John Dixon

    Narrated by Kirby Heyborne

    4/5

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    About this audiobook

    WINNER OF THE BRAM STOKER AWARD FOR SUPERIOR ACHIEVEMENT IN A YOUNG ADULT NOVEL

    John Dixon’s critically acclaimed Phoenix Island reads like “Lord of the Flies meets Wolverine and Cool Hand Luke” (F. Paul Wilson, creator of Repairman Jack). For fans of The Bourne Identity, Alex Rider, and Melissa Marr.

    The judge told Carl that one day he’d have to decide exactly what kind of person he would become. But on Phoenix Island, the choice will be made for him.

    A champion boxer with a sharp hook and a short temper, sixteen-year-old Carl Freeman has been shuffled from foster home to foster home. He can’t seem to stay out of trouble—using his fists to defend weaker classmates from bullies. His latest incident sends his opponent to the emergency room, and now the court is sending Carl to the worst place on earth: Phoenix Island.

    Classified as a “terminal facility,” it’s the end of the line for delinquents who have no home, no family, and no future. Located somewhere far off the coast of the United States—and immune to its laws—the island is a grueling Spartan-style boot camp run by sadistic drill sergeants who show no mercy to their young, orphan trainees. Sentenced to stay until his eighteenth birthday, Carl plans to play by the rules, so he makes friends with his wisecracking bunkmate, Ross, and a mysterious gray-eyed girl named Octavia. But he makes enemies, too, and after a few rough scrapes, he earns himself the nickname “Hollywood” as well as a string of punishments, including a brutal night in the “sweatbox.” But that’s nothing compared to what awaits him in the “Chop Shop”—a secret government lab where Carl is given something he never dreamed of.

    A new life…A new body. A new brain. Gifts from the fatherly Old Man, who wants to transform Carl into something he’s not sure he wants to become. For this is no ordinary government project. Phoenix Island is ground zero for the future of combat intelligence.

    And for Carl, it’s just the beginning…
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherSimon & Schuster Audio
    Release dateJan 7, 2014
    ISBN9781442367784
    Author

    John Dixon

    John Dixon is a former Golden Gloves boxer, youth services caseworker, prison tutor, and middle school English teacher. You can visit his blog at JohnDixonBooks.com.

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    Reviews for Phoenix Island

    4/5

    60 ratings13 reviews

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    • 5/5
      Lord of the flies meets teenage Rambo. A very fun read.
    • 5/5
      This is the best book ever! the story is so amazing! Scribd can you please hurry up and get Devils pocket on audiobook ? I work so I don't have time to read. please get Devils pocket on audiobook
    • 5/5
      I have been reading quite a bit of post-apocalyptic fiction of late, some of which involves zombies destroying humanity, so it becomes difficult for a novel or series to stand out from the pack. This is even moreso when you add in television shows and movies. Zombie Fallout takes place immediately after the government lets loose a cure for H1N1, which unwittingly destroys much of the human race. The main character is Mike Talbot, a former marine and father of three, who is a bit unhinged at times and often falls back on sarcasm and wiseass remarks. After getting back his son and daughter, they hunker down in his housing development, where they have created a wall to keep out the zombies. However, Mike knows it’s only a matter of time before things collapse and the zombies come in.The writing style is pretty easy going and the novel moves quickly. I thought there were more issues grammatically and stylistically than I would have liked to have seen and it could use some stronger editing. The characters were fairly well developed. One thing that distinguishes this novel is that there seems to be a sort of supernatural element to it, both in the character of Tommy, a huge teen who has premonitions of the future and the zombie, Eliza. The problem was that so much of the novel has no supernatural component that these things stick out. So, I wasn’t quite sure where the author was going with it, and in this novel, these issues weren’t fully resolved. I’ll be interested in seeing in what direction it goes in future novels. All together, this was a fun novel that I would recommend.Carl Alves - author of Conjesero
    • 4/5
      Phoenix Island by John Dixon is the first novel in what looks like a new series of novels that should appeal to the older end of the YA market. It is the basis for a new, upcoming CBS adaptation, Intelligence.

      In Phoenix Island Carl Freeman is a 16 year old orphan who has been battling bullies as long as he can remember. His fighting ability, and he is a champion boxer, has landed him in trouble repeatedly with the authorities. His juvenile delinquency record has landed him in trouble for the last time. Carl is being sentenced to Phoenix Island. The island is located out of the USA, and therefore out of US jurisdiction, somewhere off the coast of Mexico. He's told it's a juvenile detention facility, a last chance boot camp for delinquents. He must stay there, sans any contact with the outside world, until he is 18.

      It becomes clear immediately that Phoenix Island is not quite the boot camp/rehabilitation facility that Carl thought it would be. It is run with military precision and organization by a squad of sadistic "drill sergeants" who make life on Phoenix Island hell for the kids there. Added to that the other kids there are encouraged to torture the weaker kids. It's a whole system built upon the bullying that Carl so consistently has hated and fought against his whole life.

      All the kids sent there are orphans. This is to guarantee that no one will be looking for them should any "accident"happen to the kids sentenced there. They are all expendable. As the viciousness increases, Carl knows he must find a way out.

      This thriller is a page turner that can be compared to Lord of the Flies but also clearly pays homage to several other movies and books as the story progresses. Since Dixon is a boxer his inside knowledge of the sport lends a real authenticity to Carl's moves and thoughts as he fights. There is a lot of military influence in the twisted society that exists on Phoenix Island, so there is the whole vocabulary and organization that goes along with that. It's also a violent book so I wouldn't hand it to a younger teen.

      The writing is certainly good and the action kept the novel moving at a frantic clip. I did have a few "Oh, really? Really" moments in the action as various twists in the plot can into play. The twists seemed to jump, flip, and morph the plot into something else. It was certainly an entertaining book and perfect for escapism. The ending definitely promises a continuation of the story. It will be interesting to see if Intelligence is anything like Phoenix Island.

      highly recommended

      Disclosure: My Kindle edition was courtesy of Gallery Book via Netgalley for review purposes.
    • 5/5
      I picked this up as one of the books to read during commercials. That lasted about 5 minutes. I could not put the book down until I had finished it. It was both exciting and thought provoking. Improvements to our basic intelligence is an on-going field of study and experimentation. The idea that a chip, placed in the correct place in our brain, could actuate that improvement is out there. The other part of the book, the "boot camp" for "delinquent" out of control adolescents is also an unfortunate part of our world. The way these elements are mixed is fantastic.
    • 5/5
      Just finished reading this book. Excellent!! Can't wait to read the next one. This book has plenty of adventure with all the right twists and turns. Carl is the new age of the Six Million Dollar Man without all the clumsy wires.
    • 4/5
      This novel is a modern day Lord of the Flies.Carl Freeman has been in trouble over and over and has been placed in various homes and detention facilities. He’s reached the end of the road and has been sentenced to Phoenix Island until he turns eighteen years old. Phoenix Island is survival of the fittest, both mentally and physically. While on the island, Carl is determined to not be his own worst enemy. He always lets him anger take over and he quits thinking. Because he is a national champion, Carl can beat anyone up. Whenever he sees someone being bullied or picked on, Carl beats the bully or bullies badly. He can’t let himself get out of control on Phoenix Island. As soon as he arrives, he is targeted by one of the drill sergeants and another detainee. He makes friends with a few people, but making friends is dangerous. Controlling his anger and protecting his friends becomes more and more difficult. As the novel progresses, life on the island becomes more and more dangerous as the secrets are exposed.This novel is a look at what happens when there is no order and people are allowed to be as animalistic as they are. Those who remain civilized have to become animals to survive and to try to end the horror that they are living. I see this as being more a book for boys because of the violence. I don’t like boxing and don’t like to read about it, but I know it’s an interest to many of our students here. I think lots of 8th grade boys will like this novel.
    • 3/5

      This book blends in shades of Lord of the Flies, Mad Scientists and Bootcamp. Carl is a orphaned teen who just cannot stay out of trouble. He does fight for the underdog. If he sees someone being bullied he can't help himself. (boxing champion) He even takes out an entire football team for bullying a kid he didn't even know. He ends up in court again after many encounters and is given "bootcamp" at Phoenix Island. No outside contact with foster family at all, no emails, no phone calls, nothing. Until he is 18 years of age.

      Once he gets to the island different things begin to happen that makes him begin to question how his drill sargents have so much power. Some of the talk between the teens became somewhat corny to me at this point. I did really like the Ross character. I wish the author had taken even more time with him.

      The book ends up twisting and turning in several different directions. I've read that there is a tv show coming out that is based on this book but I looked at it and it seems to be nothing like this book. I would have loved to see how they would go with this story.

      All in all it's a decent book. I did think at once point that if they used the word Hooya one more time that my head would split open and start spinning around.
    • 4/5
      Thanks to Netgalley.com and Gallery, Threshold, Pocket Books for access to this title.

      This was raw and vicious and will definitely appeal to teen boys drawn to violence. In some ways it was too much, but it was also strangely compelling. There were times I really didn't like it because of the explicit violence, but there were also times I thought were very well written. I will probably look for the next one just so I can see how he gets out of the situation.
    • 3/5
      Before I start this review, I want to note that I had absolutely no idea that this book was being made into the TV series, Intelligence. I have never seen that show, and I think that I would not be inclined to based on my reaction to Phoenix Island by John Dixon. In short, the violence in this book was really over-the-top and had me scratching my head a few times as I tried to figure out how the world created in Dixon's future could resist at that level. That said, it did not fail to deliver in terms of suspense, action, and intrigue.Read the rest of this review at The Lost Entwife on April 18, 2014.
    • 4/5
      An intense thriller about Carl Freeman, a 16-year-old orphan who became a championship boxer but had a short temper and a long string of infractions, leading him to be sentenced to Phoenix Island, who takes on the worst of the worst offenders (all orphans) in a boot-camp-like environment run by cruel and sadistic drill sergeants. After a severe beating Carl ends up at the "chop shop" where he gets nursed back to uber health and undergoes training (and a microchip) to become a fighting machine. Carl realizes that he does not want to live the violent life of a mercenary and attempts to escape.While there is a difference from Hunger Games in that Phoenix Island is a present-day setting rather than a futuristic one, I did see some similarites. There is a "fight to the death mentality" among the island's inmates. Like Katniss Everdeen, Carl develops some enemies as well as some close friends, some of which suffered a tragic violent end. I would recommend to teens looking for riveting suspense.
    • 5/5
      Sixteen-year-old Carl is an orphan with a talent for fighting and a hatred for bullies. As a result, he finds himself arrested for assault (not for the first time) and is sentenced to Phoenix Island, a boot camp for young delinquents, until the age of eighteen. But Carl soon begins to have doubts about this camp. For one thing, no one seems to know where it’s located; for another, all of the kids are orphans like himself. Still, Carl is determined to make the best of a very bad situation even after he gets on the wrong side of a particularly vicious drill sergeant on the first day. But then he finds a journal, written by an earlier camper which tells a very weird and very scary tale of the Island and what happens to the orphans who end up here. Despite all his best efforts to survive until he or another camper can return to civilization and let others know the truth about Phoenix Island, Carl finds himself the pawn of a madman with a plan for global domination.I know all of this sounds a little, well, over-the-top crazy, I mean, c’mon world domination by an island of delinquent orphans? Really?! But, trust me, Phoenix Island is one heck of a page turner. It grabbed me from page one and didn’t let go until the end. I was completely sucked into the story.Carl is an extremely likeable protagonist and, although other characters tend to be less well-drawn, they make for some insanely addicting reading, especially Carl’s friend, Ross, who can’t control his joking when under stress and then there’s the charismatic madman who is the mastermind behind the plot. I heartily enjoyed Phoenix Island and was happy to discover that the ending leaves an opening for a sequel not to mention an upcoming TV series. It should be noted, however, that this is not a novel for younger kids. There are some pretty violent and even brutal scenes which might be too upsetting for them. However, for those 14 and up, it’s one wild and crazy ride.
    • 5/5
      Before I put this in my to read shelf I decided to browse a little to catch the flavor of the adventure. That was my undoing. Once started you cannot put it down. The author writes in a very convincing style and keeps focused until the very end with all the appropriate dynamics. A surprise and pleasure to read.