The eye of minds

Review by Booklist Review

In Dashner's futuristic series starter, virtual life offers Michael opportunities to escape the real world. He spends most of his time on the Virtnet, playing Lifeblood Deep with his virtual friends Bryson and Sarah. Now, haunted by his daytime experiences, he needs them more than ever. What Michael fears most comes true: Virtual Network Security tracks him down, but not to chastise him for wrongdoing; rather, they want his hacking skills to get to Kaine, a gamer who is causing terrible tragedies. Michael and his friends begin the trek into the hand-to-hand combat warfare game Devils of Destruction, but with the virtual death of his friends, Michael finds himself alone in his quest. Harrowing evil and dastardly demons place themselves in his path, and he almost capitulates to the pain and exhaustion. What awaits him in the bowels of the game hangs over readers' heads with each page turn, raising a constant question: Who is human and who is not? In typical Dashner style, this is quick and involving, with the main frustration being the wait time until the next book. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Dashner's Maze Runner trilogy was huuuuge. With a video game, author tour, and major outdoor advertising, this could be even huger.--Petty, J. B. Copyright 2010 Booklist

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.

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Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

Kicking off his new Mortality Doctrine series, this novel from Dashner follows the adventures of Michael, a teenage expert gamer in the virtual world known as the VirtNet. But an evil hacker called Kaine is taking over the VirtNet, forcing players to do his bidding, and even causing real deaths. The government enlists Michael and his friends to search the hidden realms of the VirtNet to find the rogue player-but doing so puts their lives in danger. Narrator Davies hands in a gritty, suspenseful performance that makes the book's action scenes truly exciting. He also skillfully differentiates character voices, including those of Michael and his friends, officious government agents, and the evil Kaine. This imaginative audiobook should appeal to fans of dystopian sci-fi and virtual gaming. Ages 12-up. A Delacorte hardcover. (Oct.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

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Review by School Library Journal Review

Gr 8 Up-Michael doesn't mind spending time in his NerveBox, aka "Coffin,"-it protects his physical body while he's in the VirtNet, a virtual world where he can meet friends, rack up Experience Points in games, and occasionally is killed. When that happens, he is Lifted to the Wake, where he emerges sore but otherwise physically unharmed. When Michael witnesses a true suicide on VirtNet, he is troubled by the fellow gamer's last words and her warnings about a man named Kaine. Days later, Michael is kidnapped by VirtNet Security agents, who make him an offer he can't refuse: track down the cyber-terrorist Kaine so the virtual world will again be safe. Michael enlists gamer/hacker friends Bryson and Sarah, and they set off through the dark underbelly of virtual spaces. The center portion of the book focuses largely on imaginative adventures in VirtNet. Readers familiar with online gaming will identify with the heroes as they query characters for information, look for Portals, and rewrite code to bring weapons over from other games. The final chapters find Michael alone in the level "the Deep," with the safety measures disabled. Like Dashner's action-packed "Maze Runner" series (Delacorte), this title is fast paced. Cory Doctorow's For the Win (Tor, 2010) is more realistic, and Ernest Cline's Ready Player One (Crown, 2011) is slightly more sophisticated, but this book delivers an adrenaline rush.-Maggie Knapp, Trinity Valley School, Fort Worth, TX (c) Copyright 2013. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

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Review by Horn Book Review

Michael and friends Bryson and Sarah are caught up in a dangerous cat-and-mouse game when a secret agent tasks them with helping to stop a cyberterrorist. Reminiscent of sci-fi classics Bladerunner and The Matrix, this novel's mind-bending twists and turns, action, intrigue, and a bit of philosophy will keep readers turning the pages. (c) Copyright 2014. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

(c) Copyright The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

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Review by Kirkus Book Review

Digital nightmares lurk in this Sleep. Now that the Internet is a completely immersive experience, gamers like Michael find themselves drawn to the real-life simulators that make daily living seem so much more real than outside the Sleep. But when a young woman disables the safety measures and kills herself in front of him, Michael is forced to help VirtNet Security hunt down Kaine, a dangerous gamer who is wreaking havoc in the digital world and is targeting the physical one as well. Michael heads off into the Sleep with two virtual friends and quickly finds that the safety he had previously found there no longer exists. Dashner's matryoshka vision of digital worlds is oddly limited by realism--despite the impressive tech setups and the nod to the infinite creative possibilities of virtual reality, both Michael's home life and real-world simulator lack presence. That absence carries over to Michael and his friends as well. They have few defining features or preferences, seemingly nothing but an immersion in a virtual world and some skills at coding. Secondary characters are much more defined through names, vivid descriptions, actual personality traits and more. While the pacing is mostly solid, Dashner goes overboard in the setup for the plot twist, revealing it too soon and making the last 50 pages a bit of a slog. High on concept, this is an intriguing read for the digital generation. (Science fiction. 12 up)]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

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Michael spoke against the wind, to a girl named Tanya. "I know it's water down there, but it might as well be concrete. You'll be flat as a pancake the second you hit." Not the most comforting choice of words when talking to someone who wanted to end her life, but it was certainly the truth. Tanya had just climbed over the railing of the Golden Gate Bridge, cars zooming by on the road, and was leaning back toward the open air, her twitchy hands holding on to a pole wet with mist. Even if somehow Michael could talk her out of jumping, those slippery fingers might get the job done anyway. And then it'd be lights-out. He pictured some poor sap of a fisherman thinking he'd finally caught the big one, only to reel in a nasty surprise. "Stop joking," the trembling girl responded. "It's not a game--not anymore." Michael was inside the VirtNet--the Sleep, to people who went in as often as he did. He was used to seeing scared people there. A lot of them. Yet underneath the fear was usually the knowing. Knowing deep down that no matter what was happening in the Sleep, it wasn't real. Not with Tanya. Tanya was different. At least, her Aura, her computer-simulated counterpart, was. Her Aura had this bat-crazy look of pure terror on her face, and it suddenly gave Michael chills--made him feel like he was the one hovering over that long drop to death. And Michael wasn't a big fan of death, fake or not. "It is a game, and you know it," he said louder than he'd wanted to--he didn't want to startle her. But a cold wind had sprung up, and it seemed to grab his words and whisk them down to the bay. "Get back over here and let's talk. We'll both get our Experience Points, and we can go explore the city, get to know each other. Find some crazies to spy on. Maybe even hack some free food from the shops. It'll be good times. And when we're done, we'll find you a Portal, and you can Lift back home. Take a break from the game for a while." "This has nothing to do with Lifeblood !" Tanya screamed at him. The wind pulled at her clothes, and her dark hair fanned out behind her like laundry on a line. "Just go away and leave me alone. I don't want your pretty-boy face to be the last thing I see." Michael thought of Lifeblood Deep, the next level, the goal of all goals. Where everything was a thousand times more real, more advanced, more intense. He was three years away from earning his way inside. Maybe two. But right then he needed to talk this dopey girl out of jumping to her date with the fishes or he'd be sent back to the Suburbs for a week, making Lifeblood Deep that much further away. "Okay, look . . ." He was trying to choose his words carefully, but he'd already made a pretty big mistake and knew it. Going out of character and using the game itself as a reason for her to stop what she was doing meant he'd be docked points big-time. And it was all about the points. But this girl was legitimately starting to scare him. It was that face--pale and sunken, as if she'd already died. "Just go away!" she yelled. "You don't get it. I'm trapped here. Portals or no Portals. I'm trapped! He won't let me Lift!" Michael wanted to scream right back at her--she was talking nonsense. A dark part of him wanted to say forget it, tell her she was a loser, let her nosedive. She was being so stubborn--it wasn't like any of it was really happening. It's just a game. He had to remind himself of that all the time. But he couldn't mess this up. He needed the points. "All right. Listen." He took a step back, held his hands up like he was trying to calm a scared animal. "We just met--give it some time. I promise I won't do anything nutty. You wanna jump, I'll let you jump. But at least talk to me. Tell me why." Tears lined her cheeks; her eyes had gone red and puffy. "Just go away. Please." Her voice had taken on the softness of defeat. "I'm not messing around here. I'm done with this--all of this!" "Done? Okay, that's fine to be done. But you don't have to screw it up for me, too, right?" Michael figured maybe it was okay to talk about the game after all, since she was using it as her reason to end it--to check out of the Virtual-Flesh-and-Bones Hotel and never come back. "Seriously. Walk back to the Portal with me, Lift yourself, do it the right way. You're done with the game, you're safe, I get my points. Ain't that the happiest ending you ever heard of ?" "I hate you," she spat. Literally. A spray of misty saliva. "I don't even know you and I hate you. This has nothing to do with Lifeblood !" "Then tell me what it does have to do with." He said it kindly, trying to keep his composure. "You've got all day to jump. Just give me a few minutes. Talk to me, Tanya." She buried her head in the crook of her right arm. "I just can't do it anymore." She whimpered and her shoulders shook, making Michael worry about her grip again. "I can't." Some people are just weak, he thought, though he wasn't stupid enough to say it. Lifeblood was by far the most popular game in the VirtNet. Yeah, you could go off to some nasty battlefield in the Civil War or fight dragons with a magic sword, fly spaceships, explore the freaky love shacks. But that stuff got old quick. In the end, nothing was more fascinating than bare-bones, dirt-in-your-face, gritty, get-me-out-of-here real life. Nothing. And there were some, like Tanya, who obviously couldn't handle it. Michael sure could. He'd risen up its ranks almost as quickly as legendary gamer Gunner Skale. "Come on, Tanya," he said. "How can it hurt to talk to me? And if you're going to quit, why would you want to end your last game by killing yourself so violently?" Her head snapped up and she looked at him with eyes so hard he shivered again. "Kaine's haunted me for the last time," she said. "He can't just trap me here and use me for an experiment--sic the KillSims on me. I'm gonna rip my Core out." Those last words changed everything. Michael watched in horror as Tanya tightened her grip on the pole with one hand, then reached up with the other and started digging into her own flesh. Excerpted from The Eye of Minds by James Dashner All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.

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