A cool thriller with well-blended elements of crime, suspense, and gaming culture.
In Burke’s immersive thriller, real and virtual lives interweave in the metaverse.
“You haven’t lived until you’ve died in the Land of Might and Magic.” Xperion’s tagline for its most popular virtual-reality multiplayer fantasy game takes on an ominous cast when a player hacks into the game to bypass its leveling rules and starts “killing” the top players. The hacker’s character, now known as “gray warrior,” proves to be invisible to the developers and impossible to beat by the other players, causing an avalanche of issues for Xperion’s senior staff, who commission their own hacker to find the culprit. Shea Britton, an avid gamer and a top player in the Land of Might and Magic, starts her own investigation from within the game. In the real world, Parker Reid, the preeminent profiler at the FBI, is on the trail of a potential new serial killer. The violent manner of execution, the chilling trophies, and the macabre poses the victims are left in all point to a maniac who needs to be stopped, and soon. Initial victim profiling fails to reveal a common thread until the investigators uncover the victims’ connection to the famous virtual-reality game, and the convergence of Shea’s and Parker’s investigations becomes inevitable. In this engaging, page-turning thriller, the author seamlessly weaves two seemingly disparate threads: Parker Reid’s story has a sense of real-life authenticity to the investigation, while Shea’s pursuit in the fantasy realm of the Land of Might and Magic, complete with character-building and rules of the game, brings a unique and refreshing dynamic to the plot. The narrative incorporates elements of corporate greed and dysfunctional families along with compelling character development for both Shea and Parker, making for a well-rounded read. While there’s a degree of predictability when it comes to the culprit, the journey is a reward in itself.
A cool thriller with well-blended elements of crime, suspense, and gaming culture.Pub Date: Dec. 5, 2023
ISBN: 9781951122720
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Artemesia Publishing
Review Posted Online: Nov. 21, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A fresh, funny, ambitious, and nuanced take on some of our oldest existential questions. Cannot wait for the TV series.
What would you do if you knew when you were going to die?
In the first page and a half of her latest page-turner, bestselling Australian author Moriarty introduces a large cast of fascinating characters, all seated on a flight to Sydney that’s delayed on the tarmac. There’s the “bespectacled hipster” with his arm in a cast; a very pregnant woman; a young mom with a screaming infant and a sweaty toddler; a bride and groom, still in their wedding clothes; a surly 6-year-old forced to miss a laser-tag party; a darling elderly couple; a chatty tourist pair; several others. No one even notices the woman who will later become a household name as the “Death Lady” until she hops up from her seat and begins to deliver predictions to each of them about the age they’ll be when they die and the cause of their deaths. Age 30, assault, for the hipster. Age 7, drowning, for the baby in arms. Age 43, workplace accident, for a 42-year-old civil engineer. Self-harm, age 28, for the lovely flight attendant, who is that day celebrating her 28th birthday. Over the next 126 chapters (some just a paragraph), you will get to know all these people, and their reactions to the news of their demise, very well. Best of all, you will get to know Cherry Lockwood, the Death Lady, and the life that brought her to this day. Is it true, as she repeatedly intones on the plane, that “fate won’t be fought”? Does this novel support the idea that clairvoyance is real? Does it find a means to logically dismiss the whole thing? Or is it some complex amalgam of these possibilities? Sorry, you won’t find that out here, and in fact not until you’ve turned all 500-plus pages. The story is a brilliant, charming, and invigorating illustration of its closing quote from Elisabeth Kübler-Ross (we’re not going to spill that either).
A fresh, funny, ambitious, and nuanced take on some of our oldest existential questions. Cannot wait for the TV series.Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2024
ISBN: 9780593798607
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: June 15, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2024
PERSPECTIVES
A page-turning thriller that combines a touch of magic with deep love for the natural world.
An epic battle between good and evil with a mystic twist.
When she was 10, Vida visited a fortuneteller who presented her with two broadly different futures and prophesied that she’d be “a champion of the natural world and all its beauty.” Now Vida, raised by her late great-uncle Ogden in a remote cabin surround by the beauties of nature, has no fear of wild animals, including the wolves led by her friend Lupo. Taught by Ogden, Vida, who has a special talent for dredging up gemstones, makes a living by means of a placer mine in a nearby river on government land. Her lover, school principal and activist José Nochelobo, dies in what seems to be an accident but turns out to have been murder. Terrence Boschvark, a wealthy psychopath who’ll stop at nothing to develop some nearby land, is behind the evil doings near her home. Vida, certain that someone is watching her, patiently waits for him to show himself. When he does, he turns out to be deputy sheriff Nash Deacon, who accuses her of killing his cousin Belden Bead and demands that she surrender to him body and soul. Deacon plays a game of sexual terrorism with Vida, who watched his drug-dealing cousin die of a self-inflicted gunshot wound and buried him and his car with her uncle’s backhoe. Now she plans for Deacon to be next. Once she kills and buries Deacon and his car, Vida becomes the subject of a manhunt by Boschvark’s remorseless killers. The mystical forces within her lead her to a place of hope. With some help from two native people and a tracker hired to find her, she fights for her life.
A page-turning thriller that combines a touch of magic with deep love for the natural world.Pub Date: Sept. 24, 2024
ISBN: 9781662500510
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Thomas & Mercer
Review Posted Online: Aug. 29, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2024
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