This is the fourth in a collection of seven introductory stopries to urban fantasy topics - and this is mostly shape shifters unfortunately. I guess urban fantasy has a limited meaning to these authors. Note that I skipped numnber 3 because I already (negatively) reviewed it some time ago, having read it - or as much of it as I could stomach, anyway - separately.
This is supposed to be some sort of crossover - not only soft fantasy with hard computer, but also a game with reality. I wasn't impressed. I'm neither a fantasy fan (especially not when the author doesn't have the guts to call them fairies!) nor a computer gaming story adherent, but I was intrigued by this mashup or the two. Unfortunately, I did not like the style in which this was written, nor the tone of voice, nor the endless clichés the story was falling into.
Jennet Carter is fifteen and of course the new kid in school, and of course she hooks up with the bad boy. Barf. That turned me off right there. She needs him to get her going in this new computer game because for reasons unexplained, she needs to re-enter the dark realm and confront the 'faerie' queen. Sorry, but no. Two stories in a row in this 7 story volume and both are about maidens in distress needing a shining knight to save them? Barf. I should have steered clear of this story just because it uses the word 'realm' but I did not and I blame only myself for getting into it when I really knew better. Fortunately I did not waste much time on this.
There appears to be a lot of backstory here that wasn't told. Whether that comes out in pages I did not read, I can't say, but there seemed to be a ton of it and I sure would not be remotely be interested in wading through that in the form of infodumps, flashbacks, and so on. Maybe the author was aiming to bring it all out during extensive and tedious monologuing by the villain later, but that would have been far worse. Based on my experience of this, I cannot commend it.
