Minecraft: The Island

Minecraft: The Island is a young adult isekai novel by Max Brooks, published in July 2017 by Del Rey Books. It was followed by two direct sequels: Minecraft: The Mountain and Minecraft: The Village.

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Background

Brooks' interest in the sandbox video game Minecraft began around 2012 when a friend introduced him to the game. In 2015, he was asked by Mojang to write a novel centered around the game. Brooks, by then becoming a fan of Minecraft and wanting to "justify all those hours I've spent playing" the game, agreed, and by the time that Mojang asked him to sign a contract regarding this endeavor, he had finished a manuscript. Mojang publicly revealed that a novel was in progress during Minecon 2016.
When he was writing the novel, Brooks was allowed control of everything save for what the main character looked like, which Mojang, characterizing them as a "cuboid Robinson Crusoe", wanted to make vague as to widen the demographic of readers that could personally connect to them. To this end, Brooks took care to not use gender pronouns when describing the protagonist.

Plot

The book is divided into chapters that each teach a specific life lesson. It begins with the unnamed protagonist from the real world arriving at a deserted island and finding that they are stuck in the world of Minecraft. They are forced to learn how this unfamiliar world works.

Publication history

Minecraft: The Island was published in July 2017 by Del Rey Books. Two audiobooks, one narrated by Jack Black and the other by Samira Wiley, were commissioned by Mojang in order to not limit listeners to the voice of one gender.

Reception

Jason Sheehan of NPR was intrigued by Brooks' ability to create a story that adhered to the restrictions imposed by Minecraft game mechanics, calling the novel "a master's thesis on internal consistency in genre literature". Tim Martin of 1843, however, thought that the novel focused too much on those mechanics at the expense of plot and character development. Though describing the plot as "ha a mechanical feel", John Peters of Booklist wrote that the book contained "useful hints and strategies".