Blog Tour: Bluescreen

Publisher: Balzer & Bray

Release Date: February 16th 2016

Genre: Young Adult, Science Fiction, Dystopia, Fantasy, Action, Teen

Rate: 4 out of 5 stars

Synopsis:

Los Angeles in 2050 is a city of open doors, as long as you have the right connections. That connection is a djinni—a smart device implanted right in a person’s head. In a world where virtually everyone is online twenty-four hours a day, this connection is like oxygen—and a world like that presents plenty of opportunities for someone who knows how to manipulate it.

Marisa Carneseca is one of those people. She might spend her days in Mirador, the small, vibrant LA neighborhood where her family owns a restaurant, but she lives on the net—going to school, playing games, hanging out, or doing things of more questionable legality with her friends Sahara and Anja. And it’s Anja who first gets her hands on Bluescreen—a virtual drug that plugs right into a person’s djinni and delivers a massive, non-chemical, completely safe high. But in this city, when something sounds too good to be true, it usually is, and Mari and her friends soon find themselves in the middle of a conspiracy that is much bigger than they ever suspected.

Dan Wells, author of the New York Times bestselling Partials Sequence, returns with a stunning new vision of the near future—a breathless cyber-thriller where privacy is the world’s most rare resource and nothing, not even the thoughts in our heads, is safe.

(I received a free copy of this book in exchange for a review).

(This review may contain spoilers).

I thought this book sounded really intriguing when I read the blurb of it. The cover was also particularly appealing, which is always a good thing.

It was interesting to get a glimpse into a world where everyone was online virtually all the time… but I actually found the story really self-contained. Although there were some instances where it showed how important technology was to people’s lives, I felt there was very little detail outside of the area Marisa lived.

I really did like the fact that Marisa had friendships online, but I couldn’t help but notice that she also neglected her siblings a lot. Pati made me think of my niece… and I felt a lot of empathy towards her, with how desperate she was to get her sister’s attention.

The drug Bluescreen was especially creepy to read about. I thought it was interesting to see how the society had come up with a drug that was completely digital… even though there were clearly other drugs on the market as well. It was also interesting to see that there were still gangs and other real-life dangers… as well as how Marisa interacted with her brother Chuy.

I did think that there were some leaps (or connections) that Marisa and the others didn’t make. I thought that Bao was a particularly interesting character, especially given how different he was to everyone else when it came to using the technology… or, rather, not using it.

There were a lot of good elements of tension in this book. While I did get a bit confused about what was reality and what was digital at times, I still cared about what happened to the characters and that they were safe.

I didn’t really know what to make of Saif for a lot of the book and I would have liked to see a bit more of Marisa’s parents. I wasn’t sure I especially liked Anja… but I did like Sahara and I would have liked to see more of her.

I did find this book entertaining and easy to read. I’d be interested in reading a sequel and seeing more of the characters and world of this book.

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Dan Wells is a thriller and science fiction writer. Born in Utah, he spent his early years reading and writing. He is he author of the Partials series (Partials, Isolation, Fragments, and Ruins), the John Cleaver series (I Am Not a Serial Killer, Mr. Monster, and I Don’t Want To Kill You), and a few others (The Hollow City, A Night of Blacker Darkness, etc). He was a Campbell nomine for best new writer, and has won a Hugo award for his work on the podcast Writing Excuses; the podcast is also a multiple winner of the Parsec Award.