Review – Mind War

Rick Dial is a star high school quarterback whose legs were broken in a car accident. Embittered by this injury and his father’s sudden abandonment of the family, Rick withdraws into his bedroom and, day after day, takes out his resentment and competitiveness in video games. He becomes very good at them. Too good. So he is drugged and kidnapped by the mysterious Miss Ferris and her hulking henchman, Juliet Seven. In a dark underground chamber he receives a situation briefing by persons represented in projected holograms.

The threat is that a sinister man named Kurogar has connected his own mind to supercomputers with the intention of destroying the United States through cyberwarfare. Kurogar has imagined into being a vast place he calls The Realm, and from there he plans to make war. He has already demonstrated his effectiveness by hacking into a railway train’s computer system and causing a wreck in which eighty-three people died. His next targets will be U.S. defense systems, energy grid, and other essential functions that depend upon computers.

Why has Rick been chosen? The Realm is much like a giant video game, and Rick has the highest game scores in the world. Therefore he is best qualified to enter The Realm and defeat Kurogar. Rick’s brain will be linked to computers that project a digital form of him into the realm. Whatever happens to the digital form will happen to his body and mind in real life. So his life and mind will always be at risk in The Realm, and if he overstays the time his mind will disintegrate. If he fails to defeat Kurogar, Rick will die and Kurogar will destroy the United States.

Those are the terms in Andrew Klavan’s exciting novel Mind War. Klavan’s imagination is itself a wonder in creating a succession of perils that Rick must overcome in The Realm, and these adventures are presented in flawless writing that keeps the pages turning to a conclusion that leaves no unresolved problems. The result is a stirring adventure story with great appeal to the young adults for whom it is written.