Synopsis from Amazon:
To make their digital universes more realistic, a virtual reality company begins inserting a little something extra into their video games—real human memories, emotions, and feelings they’ve extracted…from the dead.
My Thoughts: ARC
This was a strange novel…in a good way. It wasn’t what I expected from the synopsis at all. Is it going to be a tale of corporate greed? Is it going to be a story about the dangers of technology? Is it going to be a horror novel? Is it going to be a murder mystery? …Yes.
Pros: The biggest positive take away from this novel is that it took a couple of sharp turns in directions I wasn’t completely expecting. The foreshadowing is all there and you wonder when it’s going to come into play, but it doesn’t come into play in wholly predictable ways. The ending was not at all what I would have anticipated, but it worked. The changes in plot direction were not so abrupt that it loses the reader.
The author does a pretty nice job of building a surreal, disjointed feeling as the chapters progress and the protagonist starts to feel the effects of spending too much time in virtual reality. The reader begins to wonder if the narrator is completely reliable and if we can trust what we are being told.
The development of the concept is pretty solid and it is nice that we have a dissenting voice in the protagonist’s girlfriend/fiancée. Having the voice of “reason” forcing the protagonist to consider consequences, but ultimately also contributing to the problem is a nice element.
Cons: At times the jumping from reality to virtual reality was jarring. This was probably on purpose, but there were a couple of times that the switch was so abrupt that I had to go back a few pages to see if I had missed something.
The protagonist was fairly well developed, but the other characters were pretty one dimensional. The character development took a back seat to the plot and concept development and I’m not that upset about it. It did leave the story with nobody you really wanted to cheer for though. I found myself not caring too much what happened to anyone including the main character.
Overall, it was an interesting read and one that made you think about the future of technology and the ethics behind certain advancements. If you don’t leave this one feeling at least slightly unsettled, you haven’t been paying attention.
Want to give it a try? Find it on Amazon here!
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