The Eye of Minds

The Eye of Minds by James Dashner

Before she jumped she said one last sentence, “Kain’s haunted me for the last time”(Dashner 5).  Those final words changed Michael’s life forever.  After he witnesses a girl rip her core (the computer chip that separates a persons real life from the Virt-Net) out of her own head, and commit suicide, there was only one word left in Michael’s head, “Kain”.  Who was he, what did he want, and how could he “trap” people inside the Virt-Net.  Those final words are what sends Michael and two friends on an epic adventure inside the deepest and darkest places of the Virt-Net.  He will die many times and hack in to many systems of the Virt-Net but will it be enough to get to the one called Kain?

This book tells of an incredible adventure that takes place inside a video game that place you in a virtual reality making you feel and hear everything like it was happening in real life.  The game is called the “Virt-Net”, and you access it by lying down in a “coffin” which gets it name because it looks like an actual coffin. Once inside little needles and wires enter your body to control your mind and nerves to create the virtual reality.  It is basically like the game Sims on an extreme scale.  Once in the game you can hang out with friends at a restaurant and eat food and your body will react like you are actually eating real food.  In addition to just hanging out, you can play various mini games like entering a war zone and going to battle against virtual soldiers among other games. There were no issues and no danger to playing in the Virt-Net.  The Virt-Net was like the perfect world.

Unfortunately, the game became dangerous as a group of people figured out how to hack into the systems and not let people get out of the game.  They were trapping people inside the Virt-Net.  These cyber-terrorists used their skills to torture people by making them feel all the pain they would feel in real life by killing them in the game. Then they would allow them to “re-spawn” in the game, and then torture them again.  Eventually the player would go insane and rip their core out.  As more and more players began to actually die, the Virt-Net people had to find a way to stop the terrorists.  To do this they began researching the best hackers and coders they could find, and eventually they found Michael and his friends.  They set out to find Michael and tell him he must find Kain so they could shut him down. Michael and his friends realize the only way to find Kain is to enter into the Virt-Net and track him down.

This is an amazing book and another one of Dashner’s top novels next to The Maze Runner and others.  I would recommend this book to anyone. It will keep you asking questions and figuring out how they will get through the next challenge with out dying again or becoming trapped inside the Virt-Net.

Book Review by Parker M.