Synopsis
Fourteen-year-old Arvin and his friends risk using a computer-controlled role-playing game to simulate a magical world in which they actually become fantasy characters, even though the computer program is a pirated one containing unpredictable errors.
Reviews
Grade 6-10-- As this fantasy adventure begins, eighth-grader Arvin Rizalli has just become Harek Longbow, warrior elf, in the first stage of a fantasy role-playing game that simulates reality. He is on a five day quest, goal to be discovered, with six other teenagers in various roles, and his mother, impelled by curiosity to play the game for the first time. As the quest progresses, Arvin realizes first that the program has some glitches complicating their activities, and later that his mother seems to have some other, unrelated problem that interferes with her ability to play but adds to the urgency with which they must finish the game and return to reality. Just as the game is missing certain levels and controls, this novel is lacking in some basic levels of character development, motivation, and relation to a real world. In their fantasy roles, the seven players encounter giant rats, trolls, werewolves, and more, with each meeting an excuse for swordplay and general mayhem, usually accompanied by death and destruction. Arvin describes his fellow players and speculates on which roles they have assumed--this is the extent of the characterization. The mechanism or procedure by which the program simulates reality is also not explained. Velde begins this game on page one and finishes it only four pages before the end of the book, leaving little room for further developments. Fantasy game players will enjoy this story as another level of the game, but readers looking for more may be as anxious as Arvin/Harek for the game and the novel to be over. --Susan L. Rogers, Chestnut Hill Academy, PA
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Arvin Rizalli, his mother and six of his friends pirate a computer-generated, interactive role-playing game. No dull video game, the program plugs right into the players' brains, putting them in the middle of a daring quest to rescue a kidnapped princess. The quest moves at a breakneck pace, careening from forests to caves to deserts to enchanted cities. Along the way, Arvin and his company fight a dizzying array of orcs, wolves and other evildoers, but their biggest challenges come from Arvin's mother's mysterious, life-threatening illness and a bewildering assortment of dangerous glitches in the computer program. Readers who are fond of either sword and sorcery fantasy or role-playing games will not be able to put this swashbuckler down. Ages 12-up.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Trapped in a pirated version of a simulated-reality game program, a group of friends nearly have a real tragedy. Arvin plus his mother and six of his ninth- and tenth-grade friends awake in a land of magic and orcs, pledged to rescue a princess. Actually, they're asleep in the basement of computer- whiz Sheldon, who has pirated a quest program. At first, their game follows familiar lines as characters wield their powers to defeat the enemy. Then trouble looms: the program has bugs, while Mom shows signs of a real-world illness that incapacitates her game character and threatens her life. Even so, there's no choice: the game goes on. Continually skirting disaster, the troupe defeats a mock princess, releases an ensorcelled chief mage, and is finally allowed to return home--just in time, since an aneurism in Mom's brain is near breaking. Simulated reality, first seen in adult ``cyberpunk,'' is becoming a trendy plot device in YA fiction (see also recent books by Gillian Rubenstein and Monica Hughes). This succeeds better than most: though there is little development of the technology, the details are ingenious, and having the teen personalities show through their game-character facades is entertaining. The beginning here does hold more promise than is ever realized; Mom's illness and the computer bugs prove to be mostly distractions. Still, the adventures are vivid and diverting. (Fiction. 12+) -- Copyright ©1991, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
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