I really enjoy the setup the author has created where virtual reality meets old school gaming. entertaining and interesting. Had some racial stereotypes that were not appreciated, but unfortunately that is true of many of the games this book is based around as well. ( )

Arvin and his friends (and his mother) are playing a pirated version of a full immersion virtual reality game where they're all characters on a quest to rescue a kidnapped princess. However, when Arvin's mother becomes seriously ill during the game, the only way to get her to the hospital is to finish the game as quickly as possible. ( )

Arvin and his friends hack into a virtual reality D&D game. It's all fun swashbuckling action until the game starts getting deadly...I was really impressed by the natural tone of the characters, and how familiar and believable their arguments and personalities were. ( )

I've read a few books about video roleplaying games. This one is different because it was written in 1990. The main character a few times would draw comparisons with tabletop gaming, which frankly is a more likely to be unfamiliar to the modern reader than the concept of a full-immersion video one. There were also a few instances where someone had to explain different concepts like the idea of the program being stuck in a loop.

Still, it didn't seem too dated beyond that.

Oddly, compared to other books I've read, very little of the action took place outside of the game. So that I never even really had a clear picture of what the 'real' world was like. Related to this, I felt the ending was very rushed, so that it almost had the element 'and then I woke up and it was all a dream'.

The other real negative I have to say about it is that one of the characters plays an 'Indian' and another a 'gypsy'. Even though the setting was more typical D&D type setting with wizards and orcs and whatnot. It's explained that the players can be whatever type of character they want, even if it doesn't fit with the setting. Which seems silly to me. And so it was unnecessarily racist. There's no reason that character couldn't have been a ranger or a huntsman or something, since the only thing he seemed to use his character type for was tracking and being stealthy. :P

Also, the blurb on the back is misleading and does not represent the contents of the book. The main character is not a 'hacker'. His friend is the hacker, although not even really that, since all it is is a pirated copy of the game. He doesn't seem to have done any actual hacking personally.

Oh, there was also a lot of fighting and action scenes and I find too much of that boring. So, yea. ( )

User Unfriendly is a little bit like Heir Apparent. Giannine, the heroine of Heir Apparent is even a character in User Unfriendly. I thought that User Unfriendly was an inferior book. The story didn't grab my attention and I didn't find myself trying to figure out what was happening; perhaps because it wasn't clear what was wrong. The ending was neat and interesting.

Arvin and his friends have hacked into a Rasmussen role playing game. They are themselves and their characters and are expecting the usual fighting, search for treasure, and strange creatures but something is wrong. They have found several holes and glitches in the program, things that would be taken care of if they were playing in a monitored (and expensive) Rasmussen virtual parlor and Arvin's mother, along for her first ever game, is sick. As time passes slowly in the game (5 days pass in an actual hour) mistakes are made more and more often, the quest is not what they expected, and Arvin's mother gets sicker and sicker until she eventually starts to disappear from the game.

Arvin is a self-conscious teen who worries that every move he makes looks dumb and who feels that the other players are judging him and not coming to a flattering conclusion. Interestingly, after the game is over, he finds that other players had the same thoughts about themselves. ( )