Review Detail

I admit I almost passed this book over thinking it would be yet another dystopian tale. I took my copy to Starbucks to read while son was in school. Let's just say I ended up in the coffee shop for a few hours as I couldn't put this story down!

Aria lives in Reverie, a secure, domed world, where a Smarteye can take her to a virtual reality. This is a patch that is worn over the eye and can take the user anywhere he or she wants to go. The user can smell, see, feel, and even taste in these worlds. Aria has been taught that anything outside of Reverie would mean instant death. She fears leaving the safety of her world as she knows her chances of surviving in the outer wasteland are slim.

When tragedy hits, she finds herself banished from the only world she's known. A strange Outsider named Perry shows up and even though they fear and hate each other, they know have to put these prejudices aside if they want to survive.

I really loved this story. One main character of this story has to be the worlds of Reverie and the outer wastelands. The author paints a vivid description of the harsh landscape along with the dreaded Aether winds that destroy everything in their path. The contrasts of Aria's and Perry's world are extreme at the start but slowly we find they're not that much different after all.

Aria is a strong heroine who struggles to make sense of the truth of what is outside her former home. Perry is not really that different from her with his own hatreds of those who live inside the dome. Their forced relationship is tense and guarded at the beginning but slowly, once they learn they have to rely on each other to survive, that's when the chemistry starts to heat up. And heat up it does.

Another thing that I enjoyed had to be the whole concept of what happens to the brain if you only rely on living in a virtual reality.

Well-written futuristic tale with it's own unique twist. This is book one of a trilogy though I felt it could have very easily ended here.