FlumeAward – The Eye of Minds //The Eye of Minds// by James Dashner
I don’t think this has the quality of his Maze Runner series. It’s on this year’s Teen Top Ten List, and despite us advertising it for this reason, it’s not generating the interest one would expect.
-Kelly Budd, Keene High
Michael is a virtual reality gamer who spends most of his time in Lifeblood, a virtual world just like ours, but better, with his two best (virtual only) friends, Sarah and Bryson. The book opens with Michael witnessing a virtual gamer’s suicide within the game, leading Michael to discover Kaine, the dark character who lead to the suicide. Michael and his friends are tasked with the dangerous task of finding Kaine.<br/>For about the first half of the book, I kept thinking that this was not much more than a Ready Player One copycat. Yes, there are differences, but there are a whole lot of similarities, and I just enjoyed Ready Player One more. I did get involved in the story, enough to be glad that the end of the book was not it -this is a series.<br/>A decent action-adventure, and great for anyone interested in exploring the topics of virtual reality and gaming.
Mostly because I keep comparing it to Ready Player One, and there’s just no comparison, I don’t recommend this one for the final list.
-Kirsten Rundquist Corbett