1. The Game, ★★★★★
2. Digital Heretic, ★★★★★
3. Interlude-Brandon, ★★★★★
4. Virtual Prophet, ★★★★
5. Shadows, ★★★★
This addition to the Game is Life series is enjoyable. Shadows is a companion story - meaning that it is related to the series and will tie in at some point - but we get a whole new cast of characters and a whole new (assumed) world to uncover. Sam and Dawn are teenagers and gamers of an exclusive cell phone game where they are Shepherds and shear targets to reap financial gain in the real world. But as Dawn and Sam learn more about the game and their Family, they learn that much more is happening beneath the surface. How much control do they have over their own destiny?
No matter how old you become, you are never fully in control of your life.
Part of the excitement of this companion piece, largely in light of my conversation with Schott, was trying to figure out where these new puzzle pieces fit into the overall narrative. Some things are obvious someone early on has the same name from the overall narrative that we know and others are simply theories. I will say that the numbers 13, six, and five are representative here and I can only guess at what Schott is gearing up to assert.
I'll admit that I am not really sure how I feel about this one at the moment. Virtual Prophet ended kind of on a cliffhanger (that I know is continued in Digital Evolution), and my personal reading preference is to follow one cohesive story. I'll be honest that when I finished reading Virtual Prophet I was confused. After chatting a bit with Terry Schott on Facebook the best I can manage is that I skipped this companion book in 2015 because it wasn't numbered originally. He assured me that skipping this one would cause problems later in the series, so I silenced the part of me that didn't want to divert my attention to a new story. Interlude was a tangent that was more readily obvious of its value to the overall storyline, whereas a large part of me feels that the timing was off to start a new storyline. This possibly can change once I re-read Digital Evolution, because my memory on what I read three years ago is foggy at best, but as of right now I feel a little disjointed having gone from one narrative to this one and going back to the first one when sh*t kind of was hitting the fan.
Aside from my personal reading preferences for series, I really enjoyed this story. Taken on its own as a separate, albeit connected, story within the same universe it is a great read.
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