The Eye Of Minds by James Dashner

The Blurb On The Back:

To catch a hacker, you need a hacker.

For Michael and the other gamers, the VirtNet can make your wildest fantasies become real. And the more hacking skills you have, the more fun. Who wants to play by the rules anyway?

But some rules were made for a reason. One gamer has been taking people hostage inside the VirtNet with horrific consequences.

The government needs Michael, but the risk is enormous and the line between game and reality could be blurred forever …

( The Review (Cut For Spoilers): )

The Verdict:

James Dashner’s YA SF thriller (the first in a series) is a wooden, listless affair populated by dull characters who never spring to life on the page and with a premise that has MATRIX connotations but whose virtual existence means that the stakes never really feel significant. Michael simply never really came to life for me on the page – I didn’t understand how his hacker skills worked (it seemed to involve being able to access the code behind the reality but there’s little description of how this worked or how he and his friends learnt it) – and I guessed the twist relating to him in the first third of the book. Bryson and Sarah are little more than convenient sidekicks there to help keep the plot moving when required. There’s no information on how they became friends and little to suggest what keeps them together given that they’ve never met in the real world. When Kaine finally materialises he’s depressingly two-dimensional and again the twist to his story is telegraphed too early on and because this is a virtual world and you’re not shown the effects of the KillSims on real people, there’s no real feeling of the stakes here. I can imagine the visuals in this book making an interesting film but there’s simply not enough story or stakes here for me to want to read on.

Thanks to Random House for the review copy of this book.