Ok this is where I show my gaming snobbery coupled with my intense love of virtual reality stories. Putting aside the comparisons to READY PLAYER ONE (though I'd argue this has more in common with John Scalzi's LOCK IN or even Erin Kellison's Reveler series) there's some sloppy character development in terms of relationship dynamics. Including between Nixy and those who eventually reveal themselves as the antagonists.


THE LEVELLER (which is not the easiest title to trip off the tongue) invites you to believe that parents become so fed up with their kids playing video games for hours on end they'd pay a teen girl a set sum of money to drag that kid's sorry ass out of the game world. While I fully believe parents get sick of watching their kid stare dead-eyed at TV's or scream bloody murder at screens, I can't believe that someone like Nixy would be able to keep from being bullied unto death. In this world its not just "geeks" or "nerds" who play in VRLand (MEEP), its everyone.

And what is the one thing we can all agree teenagers are good at? Shaming a peer for doing the "right" thing. What Nixy does is tantamount to being the school narc with marijuana. I don't know about anyone else but that kid never made out well at my HS. Kids don't like parents taking away their toys and they like their own PEERS helping to take it away even less.

So that right there had me chewing my lip in exasperation.

Then there's the fact that the world itself is hastily put together feeling. This is a rather short book by today's YA standards (just over 250pgs) and you can feel that in the world development. Things are just a SHADE different from our reality. We're not really shown how this rather large leap in tech came about, nor is it discussed. It just is and we as the reader need to accept that. And that's fine if the main plot of the story didn't leave really big, gaping holes where consequences are concerned.

I don't know if Durango is into video games or not. A quick search on the web didn't bring up much chatter in that regard one way or the other, but what I've always felt drew people to gaming is the fact that there aren't real world consequences to what you do (largely, exceptions do occur when folk take in-game attitude into the real world). Right now my dad, who you'll have to take my word on as being one of the fluffiest people in existence (he gets queasy if he thinks about what he's consuming when he has steak), is playing a game called "The Seed". The entire purpose of which is to be the biggest amoral asshole you can be (its post-apocalyptic). And he's RELISHING this.

The game we're playing together, Dreamfall: Chapters, we're playing through each episode multiple times as "the good guy", "the bitch" and "what we really would do in that situation given those parameters". Pop Culture Site THE MARY SUE has a series about what happens if you play through Dragon Age Inquisition as a Dick. Games give people a way to be something else that would normally conflict with their moral center.

I think that's missing from Durango's book. Nixy points out that most of the kids she drags out are "living their fantasy"--whatever that fantasy is, and in the few months she's done it she hasn't run into any of the truly depraved ones so god bless her luck. However in the larger conceit of the book's universe Durango treats what the terrorists can achieve in the MEEP as small potatoes. A small, personal threat.

This particular group of terrorists had it out against Wyn's father (and his company), but I guarantee you they aren't the only ones who have genius hacking skillz. And while a fair amount will have benign intentions on a larger scale, what about that percent who won't? At no point does anyone think its a good idea to, I don't know, alert national security bureaus of the potential threat. A simple "Mr. President don't let your kid into the MEEP right now, we're dealing with a situation where they could be held hostage against the nation's best interests." phone call seemed like it should have at least been mentioned.

The concern at one point is for the players logged in illegally (circumventing certain controls set in place to avoid people from staying in so long they forget real time) and a couple character mention that if Wyn's father had acceded to their demands it could have all been over. In the real world if say bill Gates' kid is taken hostage somehow, in a manner kind of easily replicated, you can be DAMN sure every major diplomat, figure of power and rich person would freak out about their own kin. Or at the very least be strongly advised to avoid letting Johnny B. Powerhouse do the same thing as Bill Gates' kid.

I quite frankly found that to be difficult to swallow and left a huge gaping plothole in the world building to me. The book takes place over a week or so of time. In that week several real life consequences to some of the terrorists occur. And while the book ends fairly quickly after the Nixy finds a way to work things out, I was still left with a thousand and one questions. Not questions about what will happen the further the series goes on, questions about the general world and why it wasn't treated as a bigger deal.

And that essentially ruined how I felt about the novel itself. ( )

This review also published at The Children's Book and Media Review

Nixy Bauer’s job is going into a virtual reality game and dragging her classmates back to the real world. Normally it’s a great way to earn money, but when the game’s developer contacts her to fetch his son from the game, called the MEEP, Nixy has a bigger challenge than she has ever had before. Soon she discovers that her target, Wyn Salvador, doesn’t want to be found. He’s left a suicide note and challenges that are almost impossible to beat. When she fights her way through the game to retrieve him, she discovers that Wyn is being kept there by someone else. She and Wyn have to fight their way out of the game and figure out who is keeping them there.

Compared to similar books about virtual reality, such as Heir Apparent by Vivian Vande Velde and Epic by Conor Kostick, a large amount of the gaming in this book feels like a version of the Sims. The betrayals at the end fall somewhat flat, and the “insta-love” is not as developed as it could be. The book ends with more questions than answers, so readers will have to wait until the next book for their questions to be answered. In spite of its weaknesses, it’s a fun, fast-paced book that will keep the readers entertained until the last page. ( )

As a gamer I totally loved the idea of the MEEP ( )

I got about forty pages into this book and could find absolutely no will power to want to pick it back up.
There were just enough things about it that bugged me that I just decided it wasn't worth my time.
First of all, I have a husband that worked in video games. They wanted us to believe that her parents were peons in the video game's company. Peons don't create and animate entire themes full of mini games and hidden Easter eggs all over the place. Peons do the annoying non creative things- like walk around in the game trying to find problems.
Creating a theme (like the Christmas theme he supposedly made himself) would take a team of like 5 (concept artists, computer programmers, riggers, animators, etc.) at the very least 6 months - to make.
It's silly. I know.

Also, they wanted us to believe that they have the technology to put you directly into this game by using brain waves, but they didn't know how to make the battle mode game two player? That's silly. Didn't they have two players in the other areas of the game? She walked into other player's worlds to level them. That was 2 player....
That just made me feel like if something that basic had to be in place for the plot to make sense, I was going to have even more problems with the technology as the story progressed. The world she created was not believable.

The last thing was- and I know this one is REALLY stupid, but I was annoyed by the teenagers in this story. I know teenagers can be very crass and hormone driven. That was not my experience as a teenager at all though- and I get so sick of books that portray all teenagers as these horn dogs that have absolutely no drive to do something with their lives.

And the clearly awful parenting going on! Ug. This book was written for teenagers- so of course the parents in this book were morons who were too dumb to know what was going on in their kid's lives.

The main character was hired for by parents people to bring their kids back when they went Togo hide into the game. If these parents are having so much trouble with their kids being absolute idiots with this game- why do they have it? It went into how these parents basically signed their lives away to get this game- and pay a bundle to get them all the bells and whistles.

Grrr! It just eats me up. Where are the positive roll models in this book?

Like I said though, I didn't give this book much of a chance. It all may have gotten better. But, I just didn't see any reason to keep reading because-l it wasn't worth my time to wait around on the off chance that all my assumptions were wrong.

Anyways- don't let my review stop you from reading the book. I have quirky annoyances. I have a low tolerance for idiot teenager books. I read a lot more intermediate fiction.

( )

Not content just to play in the virtual world of the MEEP, Nix has become something on an entrepreneur. She has very few friends because she is something of a mercenary. Parents hire her to fetch their wayward children from the virtual world when they have overstayed the recommended time limit.
Nix’s parents are programmers for the corporation that make the game so she has a a number of advantages over the other players. She knows the system inside and out - often helping her parents to test new features. When the company owner’s son, Wyn refuses to return from the MEEP Nix is called upon to retrieve him. Nix sets a high fee and heads in to the MEEP despite her parents reservations about the dangers that exist from extended play.
Once in the MEEP Nix locates Wyn almost immediately and discovers that he isn’t refusing to come out but is being held captive. The two must fight a number of battles with various monsters, figure out how to get out, and determine who is preventing them from leaving and why. The reader is asked to suspend their disbelief in order to enjoy this far-fetched tale, which is practically impossible once these characters start to fall in love. The love story felt contrived – a weak effort by the author to appeal to broaden her audience to include reads of chick lit which I found insulting. ( )