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Jason Tanner’s life has always been different from the ordinary citizen’s. It started when he was an infant and his parents were only teenagers. A computer science prodigy, Lloyd attended MIT but left a pariah in the eyes of the school’s dean—but a computer physics genius in the eyes of his primary investor. Then his theories and ideas created a holographic machine and their world shrunk as contact with the outside world became less and less frequent. A computer prodigy now himself, Jason is about to learn that the world never waits for you if you have the ability to change it: it will come for you.
Detective Bruce Durante has been handed the case of the Comfort Killer, a serial killer so named because he appears to abduct terminally ill patients before returning their corpses to their families in refrigerated coffins. When he picks up the trail, it leads straight to the home of Lloyd Tanner.
Jason has been living life through the world of Lloyd’s invention and wishing he could carry on a relationship with Boston, the beautiful girl next door. When his father is murdered and framed as the Comfort Killer, he is brought back to reality in a hurry. He is forced to destroy all of the planted evidence—and finds he is being targeted as the killer’s new fall guy. But the secrets of his father’s invention run deep and Jason, his brother Isaac, Boston, the Comfort Killer, and Detective Durante hurtle towards one another on a deadly collision course that leaves everyone’s life hanging in the balance.
Jason's mother died of cancer when he was 11 and he and his brother, Isaac, have been raised by his father, Lloyd, who has a passion for hologram technology. Their father has homeschooled them and taught them about computers. His father has invented a hologram machine, which consists of a programming room and a holodeck room. Once inside the machine, the digital copy (DC) of the subject looks and feels real to everyone else in the machine or anyone monitoring it from outside.
Detective Bruce Durante is looking at the next victim of the Comfort Killer and feeling frustration that they can't figure out who's doing it. He's a newlywed and his wife, Lisa, is a reporter for a TV station but this case is coming between them. He catches a break and appears to find the killer but something doesn't seem right about it.
This is an intense book! At the beginning, we're given a good feel for what the hologram machine can do and how it works. As the plot thickens and the storylines merge, it becomes hard to figure out what is real and what is virtual. Towards the end, I wasn't sure who would end up alive.
Jason is a good kid who is trying to figure out what's going on. He does what he thinks his father wants him to and ends up in a load of trouble. Getting out of it takes everything he has as the people he's up against aren't going to back down. There are quite a few twists and turns and the ending sets up the sequel.
There's a teaser for the sequel in the back and it said would be out in September 2013. When I went to look it up (hoping it would be available to read), I found out that it's actually coming in 2014 and is called Boston's Quest. The author's website also makes it sound as if there will be quite a few books in this series and I look forward to reading more! This is definitely a book you need to read to experience how original and intense it is.
My Rating=4 stars
Content: Violence (nothing too graphic)
Here are two excerpts which show one of the things the machine is used for and one of the dangers of the machine:
Chapter 4 (Relationship development)
Jason
sat up, torn between revulsion and admiration. He missed his mother so much. He
wanted to join his father inside the holodeck, but something deep inside him
screamed it was wrong. The woman his father was with right now was not his
mother. She wasn’t even a real person, but a collection of photographs and
memories his father had gathered to create a computer character. It had been a
long time since he had actually seen his father with the DC of his mother. He
knew his father often frequented her presence, but he had avoided the holodeck
whenever he did.
“It’ll
be a while before you can surf,” Isaac said nonchalantly. “Dad just got in
there.”
Jason
looked at his brother. Isaac was seated at the computer terminal working on a
digital copy of his own. The center monitor was split into six sections. The
new DC’s head and torso hung in the two center sections, while her legs and
arms rotated separately off to the sides.
“You’re
sick, dude,” Jason said as he realized that Isaac was making a digital copy of
the girl across the street, Boston Komen.
Chapter 5
“…Does
having a copy of your dead mother around bother you?”
No one
had ever asked him that before. It felt good to talk about it. “It’s confusing.”
Jason looked into Boston’s
eyes. The warmth and concern he saw there was mesmerizing. “I don’t think Isaac
believes mom’s dead. I don’t use that
program because it doesn’t feel right.”
“It
would bother me, too,” she paused. “What do you do all day?”
“Excuse
me?” Jason was not offended by the question. In fact, it felt good to have
someone take an interest in him.
“You
don’t go to public school.”
“I
already got my GED.”
“Is that
it?”
“What do
you mean?”
“Is that
all you want from your life?”
Jason had
never thought about it like that. “Why? Everything I could ever want is inside
the hologram machine.”
“I’m
not.”
Her
words were like an arrow to his heart. She stepped closer, and he blushed as a
black convertible loaded with teenage girls drove up and parked on the side of
the street.
“Hey, Boston,” the driver called
out.
“I’m
coming,” Boston
waved at her friends. Then she turned back to Jason. “By the way, I broke up
with Ricky today.”
Jason
felt like he had stepped in front of a moving truck. By the time he recovered
his wits enough to speak, she had already jumped into the convertible, and they
had peeled out, disappearing down the road.
I am a professional writer with a bachelor’s degree in creative writing and a minor in grammar. I have also attended several years of classes and workshops in screenplay writing at the Los Angeles Screenplay writer’s Expo.
I love suspense thrillers and am a master at plot and character development. I enjoy stories with happy endings. I promise all my readers that when they put one of my books down or walk away from one of my movies, they will be enthused with excitement and joy. This does not mean there will not be some sad parts, because you have to feel the bitter in order to understand the sweet. In fact, I have struggled with Dyslexia my whole life, so you can imagine how overjoyed I was when DiSemblance won a Silver metal in the fantasy/science fiction category at the eLit awards in 2012.
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Ends 9/16/13
2 comments:
I love the extra info you put into your post--like the info about the next book. :)
Thanks! I figured since I looked it up, I'd help everyone else out.
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