The Siren Games, similar to the Olympic Games

After reading a few reviewers compare The Siren Games in The Paradise Planets to the Hunger Games, I thought I would take a moment to talk about the background and inspiration of The Siren Games: the Olympics. I've always been a huge fan of the Olympic Games. Where else do you get to see champions from across the globe come together to compete in the most rigorous contests to prove their mettle? Countries that are often unfriendly toward each other set aside their differences and come together to enjoy a wide variety of sports.

The Siren Games is a music-based, sonic-powered Olympics comprised of predominantly underwater sports. I've always wanted to see a music competition where the winners were determined by a definitive, non-subjective score. Rather than the usual competitions where judges and voting select the winner, the Siren Games provides a quantifiable way to prove which siren is the stronger singer. The level of mastery of Evéik and the purity and power of the acoustic frequencies generated by their vocal cords determine the amount of energy produced by their siren suits. Thus, the most athletic sirens will lead their team to score more points in AquaSphera, earn lower times in The Abyss, eliminate more opponents in The Sonic Battles, and outrace the opposition in The Ship Races.

The Siren Games has high stakes, like The Hunger Games, but no one is fighting to the death, and The Siren Games weren't created as a form of punishment to continually remind the lower classes of their status. They were created to provide all Gaians with the chance of earning their place on Paradise.

While I enjoyed the Hunger Games, they really provide little to no inspiration behind my world-building and storytelling in The Paradise Planets. If this is not apparent enough in Book One, it'll become more and more obvious as the story progresses.

By: Shaun Barrowes