Dazzled by Books

"Bluescreen" by Dan Wells was not at all what I was expecting. I was disappointed. I had very high hopes for this novel and I can admit that maybe having those high of hopes were NOT completely fair. I really liked the SCI-FI and Technology of the story. I was just extremely disappointed with how everything was executed. I felt so lost in "Bluescreen." There was a point that I was 170 pages in and I was like "I really had no idea where this story is going."

This novel is about a group of teens that have something called a djinni inside their heads. Now this djinni is kind of like a computer because when it goes down, it needs to reboot. This is something that gets installed into someone's head because there is one character in the story that doesn't have one. This djinni lets people basically be online at all times. No more computers or phones because it is all in one's head. There was a few mentions to tablets but even then, I am not totally sure there was a lot of them. I think the biggest computer reference in the stories were servers, so basically this is the main computer. I can't imagine having this computer inside my head.

I had a hard time getting to know the characters. They didn't seem to be dynamic to me. The characters were more flat. Anja gets her hands on a new drug called bluescreen, which is a virtual drug that plugs right into a person's djinni. This bluescreen drug ends up entering an extra code into ones djinni that can't be found by security networks. Marisa is our main character and she is trying to help Anja get this code out of her head, but what Marisa learns is that there is something more going on behind the scenes. This isn't just some regular hacking job.

Mari (Marisa) is the character that the reader gets to know the most. I just feel like I still don't really know who she is. I got to learn information about her but I don't really know her as my main character in the story. She doesn't have all of these sides to her that she should have. She is very flat and nonexistent to me. I really was just expecting more out of these characters. The only reason I am interested in the second one is because of how this one ended. I want to know what will happen next.

I really liked the concept of this book. I was looking forward to learning all about the technology, but the story just didn't do it for me. I found myself more disappointed then entertained.