Rinn's Review of The Eye of Minds (Mortality Doctrine, #1)

by James Dashner

From James Dashner, author of the #1 New York Times bestselling Maze Runner series, comes the first book in the bestselling Mortality Doctrine series, an edge-of-your-seat cyber-adventure trilogy that includes The Rule of Thoughts and The Game of Lives.

Includes a sneak peek of The Fever Code, the highly anticipated conclusion to the Maze Runner series—the novel that finally reveals how the Maze was built!

The VirtNet offers total mind and body immersion, and the more hacking skills you have, the more fun it is. Why bother following the rules when it’s so easy to break them? But some rules were made for a reason. Some technology is too dangerous to fool with. And one gamer has been doing exactly that, with murderous results.
The government knows that to catch a hacker, you need a hacker. And they’ve been watching Michael. If he accepts their challenge, Michael will need to go off the VirtNet grid, to the back alleys and corners of the system human eyes have never seen—and it’s possible that the line between game and reality will be blurred forever.

Praise for the Mortality Doctrine Series:

“Dashner takes full advantage of the Matrix-esque potential for asking ‘what is real.’” —io9.com

“Set in a world taken over by virtual reality gaming, the series perfectly capture[s] Dashner’s hallmarks for inventiveness, teen dialogue and an ability to add twists and turns like no other author.” —MTV.com

“A brilliant, visceral, gamified mash-up of The Matrix and Inception, guaranteed to thrill even the non-gaming crowd.” —Christian Science Monitor

I received a copy of this book for free from Netgalley, in exchange for an honest review. Also posted on my blog, Rinn Reads.

The Eye of Minds opens with the protagonist, Michael, witnessing a girl commit suicide within the game world of the VirtNet. But before doing so, she talks to Michael and tells him she will never be free. She cuts out her Core, the device which keeps the virtual life separate from the real one – meaning that if she dies in the game, she dies in real life.

The VirtNet is a place of escape for millions of people, who link up to the game via boxes which provide them with nutrients whilst they play. To some, having a virtual reality world to escape into 24/7 may be perfect. However, this shocking opening shows that there is a dark side to this virtual utopia – because it’s never a utopia, right? Through witnessing this act, Michael becomes involved with something he never expected, something that requires him to risk not only his virtual life, but his real one too.

The Eye of Minds is a very fast-paced novel that almost constantly kept up a sense of terror and fear, with Michael and his friends being pursued at every move. It took something that sounded like it could be an amazing invention and showed how it could go horribly, horribly wrong. Whilst I love the idea of a virtual reality online game, this was pretty terrifying. Whilst Michael’s friends, Sarah and Bryson, felt a little flat in all that we knew about them was that they were excellent coders, this also reflected how little Michael knew about his own best friends.

With a fantastic twist that I did NOT see coming, this is a fast-paced and action-packed science fiction novel with an element of mystery. It ended at a great point and got me really excited for book two. Whether you’re a gamer or not, I highly recommend this book – after all, just like with virtual reality, you forget the characters are in fact within a game for the majority of the book. Perfect for fans of the .//hack series or Ready Player One.

The Eye of Minds (Mortality Doctrine, #1)

by James Dashner

Reviewed by Rinn on May 11, 2015

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