Have you ever been so absorbed in a fantasy novel that you completely lost yourself in it? That kind of immersion can be fine—up to a point. But what I experienced was far beyond that. It was hard, brutal, dangerous… even merciless. It all began on my fifteenth birthday, when I was given a book as a gift. At first, it was like any other book. Its title was The Island of a Thousand Deaths. The story follows a captain named Cobra and his assistant, Redbeard. They own a ship—but not an ordinary one. This ship doesn’t sail on water; it flies through the sky. In appearance, it looks like an old wooden vessel, yet it moves only through the air. My problem began the moment the book swallowed me whole. Yes—you heard that right. Swallowed me. I didn’t just read the book; I fell entirely into it. And now the problem is this: I am no longer a reader. I am a boy who must be punished… a boy who has to escape from the island. Oh—and I almost forgot to mention this: Cobra and Redbeard take bad children to the Island of a Thousand Deaths to “teach” them a lesson.