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.
Amazon
Excerpt:
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.
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.
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 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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