Knights of Forty Islands is a science fiction novel by Sergey Lukyanenko Written from 1988 to 1990 in Alma-Ata, this tale, at the same time romantic and harsh, describes teenage children moved into an artificial alien-created environment and forced to fight each other for supremacy.

Although retaining the world of feelings of usual children, these "knights" change: they learn to fight to the death, not to pay much attention to wounds; they cover friends and take revenge for fallen ones.

Dima and Inga, a girl he knew on Earth, propose the establishment of a Confederation of islands as the way to stop the Game, and get support among their peers.

However, the Confederation, even realized, proves to be unstable and is doomed from the beginning: though most want to return home, some only want power for themselves... Also, this attempt was not the first: Dima and his friends discover a hidden room with remains of children who got on islands during the Second World War and locked themselves in, when their attempt of Union of Islands collapsed because of betrayal.

Lukyanenko draws on a harsher city subculture and is closer to Golding's pessimistic outlook in Lord of the Flies, though his skepticism expresses on higher levels of social and inter-cultural interaction, than just descent to savagery.