Doomed - Hardcover

Deebs, Tracy

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 080272373X ISBN 13: 9780802723734

Publisher: Walker Childrens, 2013

Synopsis

Pandora's just your average teen-glued to her cell phone and laptop, surfing Facebook and e-mailing with her friends-until the day her long-lost father sends her a link to a mysterious site featuring twelve photos of her as a child. Unable to contain her curiosity, Pandora enters the site, where she is prompted to play her favorite virtual-reality game, Zero Day. This unleashes a global computer virus that plunges the whole world into panic: suddenly, there is no Internet. No cell phones. No utilities, traffic lights, hospitals, law enforcement. Pandora teams up with handsome stepbrothers Eli and Theo to enter the virtual world of Zero Day. Simultaneously, she continues to follow the photographs from her childhood in an attempt to beat the game and track down her father-her one key to saving the world as we know it. Part The Matrix, part retelling of the Pandora myth, Doomed has something for gaming fans, dystopian fans, and romance fans alike.

About this title

About the Author

TRACY DEEBS is also the author of the Tempest series and the co-author of The International Kissing Club (under the pseudoynm Ivy Adams). She lives in Austin, Texas, where she is a writing and literature professor at Austin Community College.
www.tracydeebs.com

Reviews

Gr 9 Up-Pandora Walker, 17, hasn't heard from her father in 10 years, so she's shocked when she receives an email on her birthday. Despite her mother's warning to never have anything to do with him, she opens the email. Clicking on pictures and links to read sweet, nostalgic letters makes her feel loved in a way that she hasn't in a long time. What the teen doesn't realize is that each click releases a section of code. All combined, they create a computer worm that will annihilate civilization. Pandora's father is a cyberterrorist, and he's using her as a pawn to destroy the world. Or is he? He's left her one ray of hope buried deep in an online multiplayer game. If Pandora and her friends can track down clues in real life and in the game, they just might be able to stop the destruction. This novel combines reality, virtual reality, and a love triangle in a nonstop, action-filled plot. As the three heroes race across the country, readers are pulled into their increasingly frantic, dangerous, and desperate search. Character development is secondary here, but the characters are likable, if not all that believable. The plot itself has a few holes, leaves a lot of questions unanswered, and ultimately tries to wrap everything up too quickly. Overall, however, this is still an enjoyable title for gaming- and adventure-loving teens.-Heather E. Miller Cover, Homewood Public Library, ALα(c) Copyright 2013. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Pandora Walker really wants to be a normal teen. But that’s definitely not happening after she unwittingly releases a technological Armageddon on the world. Raised by a mother who always insisted Pandora’s father was a bad person and that she should never respond to any contact from him, Pandora naturally can’t resist clicking on a birthday e-mail link from the mysterious man she has never known. She instantly plunges the modern world into a dark age that might be saved only by playing—and winning—her favorite virtual reality game. Assisted by Theo and Eli, handsome stepbrothers who share an uneasy alliance as well as a thoroughly hormonal hold over Pandora’s interest, she attempts to save the world, track down her father, and not lose her mind in the process. As the teens run from every government agency possible, the virtual world blends with the real world in an eerie dance. Deebs’ fifth novel (Tempest Unleashed, 2012) smartly utilizes the classic love triangle, teen-as-outsider, and universal search for love in this amalgam between the Pandora myth and very contemporary fears about “the grid” going down. Grades 7-12. --Julie Trevelyan

Edition details

• Publisher: Walker Childrens
• Publication date: 2013
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 080272373X
• ISBN 13: 9780802723734
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 480