The Eye of Minds by James Dashner

308 pages

"Michael is a gamer. And like most gamers, he almost spends more time on the VirtNet than in the actual world. The VirtNet offers total mind and body immersion, and it's addictive. Thanks to technology, anyone with enough money can experience fantasy worlds, risk their life without the chance of death, or just hang around with Virt-friends. And the more hacking skills you have, the more fun. Why bother following the rules when most of them are dumb, anyway?

But some rules were made for a reason. Some technology is too dangerous to fool with. And recent reports claim that one gamer is going beyond what any gamer has done before: he's holding players hostage inside the VirtNet. The effects are horrific--the hostages have all been declared brain-dead. Yet the gamer's motives are a mystery.

The government knows that to catch a hacker, you need a hacker.

And they've been watching Michael. They want him on their team. But the risk is enormous. If he accepts their challenge, Michael will need to go off the VirtNet grid. There are back alleys and corners in the system human eyes have never seen and predators he can't even fathom--and there's the possibility that the line between game and reality will be blurred forever." -Dust Jacket

One of the things I'm learning about James Dashner books is that you will spend the majority of the book not knowing what's going on. The ride will be crazy, but sometimes crazy is good. James Dashner's mind must be one messed up place. :) The conclusion of the The Maze Runner series still puzzles me. That series was like the literary equivalent of Lost. This book is like the literary equivalent of Inception, and just like Inception this book probably takes a few reads to understand. (I was on my 4th or 5th viewing of Inception before I felt like I had a good grasp of what was happening and what level the characters were in.)

I did like the subtle commentary on people living in virtual worlds. The characters in this book hook themselves up to Coffins which let them experience all physical aspects of the virtual world without actually getting hurt or killed. It's an idea we've seen in other movies/books and it doesn't seem too far-fetched. I think virtual living instead of really living is a huge problem. It's so easy to check out of reality with smart phones and other electronics. About three-fourths of the way through this book I got a little bored though. There was just too much weird stuff going on for me. I think The Death Cure kept coming to mind and I kept hoping that the author would explain things at the end in a clearer way than that book did. I was pleasantly surprised by the twist at the end but it also left even more questions that will prompt a re-read before the next book comes out next fall. I'm getting a little tired of trilogies! The twist was good enough though to bring me back for The Rule of Thoughts in 2014. There was no language in this book which was nice, but there were some violent parts so I'd say it's a PG-13 book.