Metawars - Fight for the Future by Jeff Norton

Metawars - Fight for the Future
by Jeff Norton

It's unfortunate that I read this one after Insignia because so many of the details are the same. Jonah lives in the real world but, like all the other people, he plugs himself into a virtual world where everything is nice and pleasant. That is, until a war starts brewing between the Guardians and the Millenials. The latter want to take over the virtual world and rule it with one governor, whereas the Guardians would rather have a notion of 'free rule' where everybody governs. Both Jonah's parents have been killed as a consequence of the war, so he teams up with his dad's best friend from RAF days, Axel, and his daughter, Sam, to help save the virtual world - the Metasphere - from the clutches of Matthew Granger and his cronies.

This is the first in a four-part Metawars saga.

Insignia by S.J. Kincaid

Insignia
by S.J. Kincaid

This has the makings of a good story, but it takes ages for anything of substance to actually happen, and the book was far too long - 400 pages. The blurb on the back of the book says it is about virtual reality wars in the sky, so I was expecting a lot of war action, but it was rather lacking. It basically follows the story of a teenager who is picked because of his skills on virtual reality games (he even attends a virtual reality school because he moves around so much with his dad), and he is recruited into a school where the pupils are trained to become fighters in the virtual war that is taking place. They all have implants put into their brains so they can be hooked up and programs downloaded into them to speed up the learning process. It seems this young boy has a very rare talent for accessing high security programs using his mind and brain, and can bypass firewalls to get to information. A lot of technical and computer speak abounds! Shame the book wasn't halved!

This is the first in a trilogy. The second, Vortex, is out July 2nd 2013.