A fun, fast-paced read that is just as much about friendship as it is about futuristic technology.
In this techno-thriller, a group of college students discovers a portal to a virtual world created by a secretive technology company—and a plot to use this world for evil.
Josh Amandil is about to start his sophomore year at Virginia Tech studying computer science. He has just moved into a new apartment with his friend Larry and Larry’s girlfriend, Sylvia. The new arrangement upsets Josh’s childhood best friend, Kyle, a genius with social anxiety issues. A strange man representing Spyrius Technology, a cutting-edge tech company, interrupts the unpacking. He offers the trio $10,000 to take a different apartment. Suspicious, Josh refuses the offer, and sure enough, while investigating the place, the group discovers a strange projectorlike device hidden in a safe. It produces what at first appears to be just a rectangular purple hologram but is actually a portal into a whole new world, built line for line out of code by Spyrius as a top-secret project. While exploring this new world, dubbed Oz, Josh and his friends discover that the head of security for the project plans to sell the technology to the highest bidder and eliminate anyone who gets in his way—including idealistic Spyrius founder Sebastian Danbridge. Josh, Kyle, and company must warn Sebastian and stop the tech from being sold to potential terrorists before it’s too late. Debut author Connor has decades of experience in IT, and it shows in his tech-savvy, jargon-smattered writing. Those without a programming background might find some of the story confusing, as it occasionally delves a little too deep into technical logistics, but Josh’s otherwise straightforward narration and some action-packed set pieces help keep even the least tech-friendly readers engaged. Josh and Kyle’s friendship and the strain it is under as the two of them start to grow up and potentially apart will ring true for many a reader; their relationship gives the story heart.
A fun, fast-paced read that is just as much about friendship as it is about futuristic technology.Pub Date: July 5, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-9965312-0-7
Page Count: 248
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Dec. 15, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles...
Sisters in and out of love.
Meghann Dontess is a high-powered matrimonial lawyer in Seattle who prefers sex with strangers to emotional intimacy: a strategy bound to backfire sooner or later, warns her tough-talking shrink. It’s advice Meghann decides to ignore, along with the memories of her difficult childhood, neglectful mother, and younger sister. Though she managed to reunite Claire with Sam Cavenaugh (her father but not Meghann’s) when her mother abandoned both girls long ago, Meghann still feels guilty that her sister’s life doesn’t measure up, at least on her terms. Never married, Claire ekes out a living running a country campground with her dad and is raising her six-year-old daughter on her own. When she falls in love for the first time with an up-and-coming country musician, Meghann is appalled: Bobby Austin is a three-time loser at marriage—how on earth can Claire be so blind? Bobby’s blunt explanation doesn’t exactly satisfy the concerned big sister, who busies herself planning Claire’s dream wedding anyway. And, to relieve the stress, she beds various guys she picks up in bars, including Dr. Joe Wyatt, a neurosurgeon turned homeless drifter after the demise of his beloved wife Diane (whom he euthanized). When Claire’s awful headache turns out to be a kind of brain tumor known among neurologists as a “terminator,” Joe rallies. Turns out that Claire had befriended his wife on her deathbed, and now in turn he must try to save her. Is it too late? Will Meghann find true love at last?
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles (Distant Shores, 2002, etc.). Kudos for skipping the snifflefest this time around.Pub Date: May 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-345-45073-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2003
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.
Coelho is a Brazilian writer with four books to his credit. Following Diary of a Magus (1992—not reviewed) came this book, published in Brazil in 1988: it's an interdenominational, transcendental, inspirational fable—in other words, a bag of wind.
The story is about a youth empowered to follow his dream. Santiago is an Andalusian shepherd boy who learns through a dream of a treasure in the Egyptian pyramids. An old man, the king of Salem, the first of various spiritual guides, tells the boy that he has discovered his destiny: "to realize one's destiny is a person's only real obligation." So Santiago sells his sheep, sails to Tangier, is tricked out of his money, regains it through hard work, crosses the desert with a caravan, stops at an oasis long enough to fall in love, escapes from warring tribesmen by performing a miracle, reaches the pyramids, and eventually gets both the gold and the girl. Along the way he meets an Englishman who describes the Soul of the World; the desert woman Fatima, who teaches him the Language of the World; and an alchemist who says, "Listen to your heart" A message clings like ivy to every encounter; everyone, but everyone, has to put in their two cents' worth, from the crystal merchant to the camel driver ("concentrate always on the present, you'll be a happy man"). The absence of characterization and overall blandness suggest authorship by a committee of self-improvement pundits—a far cry from Saint- Exupery's The Little Prince: that flagship of the genre was a genuine charmer because it clearly derived from a quirky, individual sensibility.
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.Pub Date: July 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-06-250217-4
Page Count: 192
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1993
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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