Review: Grid Seekers (Grid Seekers, #1) by Logan Byrne @lolmynameslogan @XpressoTours @XpressoReads

Grid Seekers by Logan Byrne 

(Grid Seekers, #1) 

Publication date: May 4th 2015

Genres: Dystopia, Young Adult

Synopsis:

In a dystopian future, WorldNet, a semi-autonomous evolved form of the Internet, controls daily life.  WorldNet allows people to plug themselves in, transporting their minds and sensory organs into what citizens call the grid while their physical bodies stay put.  Inside WorldNet they can shop, bank, dine, travel, and do everything they can do in the real world, and although WorldNet itself is free, there’s a cost for doing business.

Any citizen aged sixteen to sixty who accesses WorldNet during the year is entered into a lottery. Twenty-four people, four from each of  six megacities, are randomly chosen to compete in an annual televised competition in which they’re plugged in and forced to search for one of two hidden talismans.  If they fail to find one of the talismans, or if they die in the process, they’re sentenced to three years of hard labor.  But if they win, they’re granted one wish, any wish, that could completely change their lives—or the world.

Alexia Meyers, a seventeen-year-old from New York City, hardly has any chance of being drawn in the lottery—after all, she lives in a megacity of millions.  When Alexia is chosen, though, her entire world crashes and she realizes that her life is going to change in the worst of ways.  She’s quickly taken to train for the competition, where she learns self-defense, survival, and strategic tactics for surviving—and winning—the competition. Alexia and her partner, Liam, must learn to work together to outwit their competitors and find the talismans, but they quickly learn it won’t be easy—especially when another team decides to take Alexia and Liam down.

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Excerpt:

When I was about ten minutes from work I passed by a shop. A sign in the window immediately caught my eye and caused me to stop in place. The shop was a café, though they didn’t serve any food. They served access to WorldNet, which for some people was far better than even the tastiest cuisine money could buy. Cafes like this were starting to sprout up more frequently, and they offered anyone with a little cash the luxury of logging onto WorldNet comfortably, getting to see the world and an environment that was artificially better than the one I was standing in now.

“First-time customers get twenty minutes free inside WorldNet. Claim your twenty minutes of fun now before space fills up! Spots are limited!” the sign read. 

WorldNet was unique in that it worked on a four-to-one ratio between minutes in the real world and minutes inside the grid. For every four minutes that went by in the physical world, one minute went by in there, which meant my time in the grid would only feel like five minutes in the physical world. That wasn’t that long. I had thirty-five minutes left before work. Twenty minutes in there and a ten minute-walk to work left me five minutes to spare in case anything went wrong, which I knew it wouldn’t. I looked around, saw nobody coming from either direction and, biting my lower lip, decided to take the plunge. I walked up to the door and opened it up, as a little bell rang above me. 

There was a screen above the front counter showing all of the pods available. Only one had a green light, which meant it was available. All the others were occupied, which was surprising because they had ten pods and it was a weekday morning. A woman walked out of a door behind the front counter and came towards me with a smile on her face. 

“Hello, can I help you?” she asked. 

“I’m here for the promotion. I saw the sign,” I said, pointing behind me at the banner strung on the window. 

“Oh, yes, please come forward. I can definitely help you with that,” she said. 

I walked up to the counter as she pulled up a small screen from below, a scanner from what I remembered the last time I logged on, and looked back up at me. 

“I will just need your thumb print, if you’d be so kind. It’s for government purposes, not for us,” she said.

I pressed my right thumb against the scanner, the light behind it going from left to right before the blue screen turned green, which I took as a good sign. 

“Good, good. You’re approved for access to WorldNet. Is this your first time?” she asked, putting away the scanner. 

“No, but I haven’t been on in a while,” I said. 

“Well, you’re about to have a great time. If you’ll follow me, I’ll take you to your pod,” she said. 

She walked out from behind the counter and I followed her down a hallway. We stopped in front of a pod with the number nine painted on the door. She opened it, extended her arm, and smiled as I walked inside. There was a somewhat darker room inside lit up only by strings of lights along the trim on the walls. There was a white chair in the center of the room with a large machine behind it, and there were arm and leg restraints on the chair itself, which I remembered was to make sure you didn’t wander off or fall out of the chair. 

“If you’d just sit down, we can get started,” she said. 

I sat in the chair and got comfortable before the restraints automatically fastened on me, though not so tightly as to make me feel threatened or uneasy. She pressed some buttons on the machine behind me, but I had no clue as to what exactly she was doing. 

“Okay, we’re going to get started in a second. Once your twenty minutes are up, the network will ask you if you’d like to pay for more time. If you answer no, you’ll be logged out and woken back up. You’re going to feel a sting in a minute. That’s normal, and it’s just the neuro harness injecting into you so that it can tap into your central nervous system, which allows you to have all of your worldly senses inside WorldNet. Do you have any questions?” she asked. 

“No, I don’t think so,” I said. 

“Okay then, here we go,” she said. 

I heard her press a button before I felt something quickly jab into the back of my neck, shocking me upright. I saw a rush of white numbers surge past my eyes before it turned blindingly bright. A ringing sound in my ears caused my brain to rattle a bit before the white glow started to dissipate, and I was looking around, standing inside WorldNet.  Everything around me was white, the entrance devoid of any color or life. Logging in always left a metal taste in my mouth that disappeared within a minute or so.  

“Hello, and welcome to WorldNet. My name is Gordana, and I’ll be your guide. What is your name?” 

“Alexia,” I said. 

My Review:

I received a free copy of the book from the author for my honest opinion.

Alexia Meyers is seventeen years old and lives in a dystopian future where the internet is no longer known as the internet it is now called the WorldNet. In the WorldNet people are physically connected to WorldNet. Well their bodies don’t literally go inside WorldNet but it feels and looks real to them. They know that their bodies are not really there with them even though it does feel like it. Alexia lives in New York one of the six megacities as they are called now. Alexia has never been outside of New York but neither have most of the other people who live there. New York has a block wall built around it now so she couldn’t leave New York if she tried.

New York is divide into different sections by I guess you could say by class or how rich a person may be. Alexia is on the down side of everything so she never got much of an education because they couldn’t afford it. Besides she needed to go to work to help her mom, Kate out with paying bills and buying groceries. She also helps take care of her little sister Saraia. Alexia loves both her mother and sister so very much at the moment they are her life. Alexia is so good hearted they she has never felt any resentment toward her mother or sister for having to work and help make ends meet as they say. Everyone in Alexia’s world has to do the same thing probably so that is all they know.

Once a year they hold a lottery drawing where there are four people from each of the six megacities picked to be on a live tv show. To be eligible to enter the lottery you must be between the ages of sixteen to sixty and have been on the WorldNet at least one time within the past year. This year Alexia is one of the lucky ones who was drawn to be on the tv show if you want to call it that.  On this tv show they assign everyone a partner from their own city and they must compete against others from their own city and from the other megacities. The losers are punished severely so Alexia is determined to win the contest so that she can go back home to her family.

She is taken away from her family whom she may not see again for a very long time if she does not win. She is taken to a facility to meet the other twenty-three people whom she will be competing against and her partner. She will be trained and then sent inside WorldNet to compete and hopefully win. Alexia’s partner is a very handsome young man, Liam who may just be the only person that she can trust. Well hopefully she can trust him as he is her partner. There are times in the game that I am not so sure if she can trust him or not. One minute he seems like the greatest human on the face of the earth and the next minute he sounds like he is about to stab you in the back.

I really enjoyed reading Grid Seekers way more than I thought I would. It was so different than any book I think I have ever read. It was written like a movie sort of. Half of the time I thought I was watching a movie. I loved trying to guess who did what and who the good guys were and who the bad guys were. Grid Seekers is an amazing book that will take you on the ride of your life. You won’t know from one minute to the next what is going to happen. But one thing I can tell you is you better strap in and hold on when you start reading it or you just may fall right off. It will take you on so many hair bend turns and twist you won’t know what has hit you. But it is one book you won’t want to miss out on reading. So snatch your copy today so you go on this little ride with Alexia, Liam, Jason, Bridgette, Jamie, Mathew just to name a few of the characters. Some of the characters will surprise you while you can guess exactly what some of the characters are up too or at least you think you do. Any ways I can’t wait to read the next book. Will it tell the story from Liam’s or one of the other characters pov or will it tell us more about Alexia and Liam? I would love to read more about Alexia and Liam and their families. Thanks Logan for one awesome book. I tee totally loved it! I recommend it to all age groups who loves a good story.

About the Author:   

 Logan Byrne is a young adult author currently living in Illinois.  He has always had a vivid imagination and loves playing the books he writes out in his head as he writes them.   

 Logan loves connecting with fans and would love to hear from you!   

If you would like to connect with Logan, please feel free to ‘like’ him on Facebook or ‘follow’ him on Twitter.  Following Logan will allow you to be up to date on other novels in the works, as well as chances at giveaways and advance copies of his next novels.  The links to both of those websites, as well as his website and blog, are below.    

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