Like many 16-year-old boys, my son is into video gaming. We all have our different ways of escaping the world and that is one of his. He also loves to bury himself in a good book and the more action, the better.
So what happens when you combine video gaming with reading? You get Z. In this book you get the best of both worlds. The main character, Josh, loves to play his virtual reality zombie hunting game. But then he receives an invitation that he just can’t turn down, the chance to play the game in real life. This is truly a teenage boy’s dream.
When Josh first enters the “Docklands” he is told that the zombies are robots. No big deal, nothing wrong with wiping out a piece of metal. Yet it doesn’t take long before Josh notices that the zombies are awfully realistic.
Meanwhile the mastermind behind this real world of zombie hunting gives Josh a drug called Z. It helps him to think like a zombie and causes him to act a bit wild.
Josh has more to tackle than just zombies, as a fellow gaming friend of his ends up disappearing. He is now also on a quest to find his missing friend.
It doesn’t take long before he finds out that the drug Z is made by extracting blood from the zombies. And as it turns out, they were once human beings. No wonder they looked so realistic. This ends up becoming a real moral issue later on when Josh has to defeat the zombies in what becomes the final game.
There is, naturally, a bad guy in the story. He pretty much tells Josh that in order to get back to the real world; he will have to play a final game. I can’t reveal the outcome of the final game. You will have to get the book, published by HarperCollins, which is not set to be released until September 7, 2010.
In the end my son really enjoyed this book. As a matter of fact, he read it in one day. So it was clearly one of those books that you just can’t put down. It has the makings of a great action story for teenage boys, especially with incorporating the video game world.
Of course, there is the word of caution to parents who aren’t thrilled about the idea of killing anything, even if it’s a zombie. There is some violence in the book.
Overall I would highly recommend this book to other teenagers who enjoy video gaming and have ever thought about what it would be like for their video gaming experience to become real.
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