Publishers Weekly
04/17/2023
Khoury (the Skyborn series) layers a future New York City and a role-playing fantasy adventure to create an inventive techno-thriller reminiscent of Ready Player One. White-cued 13-year-old Ashton “Ash” Tyler, beset by bullies at soccer and his widowed mother’s cruel boyfriend at home, increasingly retreats into virtual reality games. After Ash helps a man who is being assaulted, the man gives him a box that turns out to contain a single-player VR game, Glass Realm. As Ash plays, he encounters a shopkeeper named Ruby who seems strangely unlike a non-player character. Alternating chapters follow white-haired, red-gold-eyed Ruby, a resilient teenager gradually resisting a voice ordering her to stay on script. Ash’s arrival helps her to break free, and together they follow a quest to seek the truth about Ruby’s past and her true nature, an arc that soon takes on a new urgency around real-world events. Intrusive drone surveillance and dangerously immersive VR add a cyberpunk feel to a grim setting. Khoury loads tremendous heart into explorations of free will and sentience throughout this fast-paced cross-genre read, which is accessible to gamers and nongamers alike. Context clues suggest racial diversity in the secondary cast. Ages 8–12. Agent: Lucy Carson, Friedrich Agency. (June)
School Library Journal
05/01/2023
Gr 3–7—Khoury's latest is an exciting cyber-thriller along the lines of Ready Player One and War Games. This is the story of 13-year-old Ash who is drawn to the virtual world since, in real life, he has an abusive stepfather and school bullies. Ash's adventure begins when one night, on his way back from a video arcade, he helps a person on the street in need. In thanks, the man gives him a gift of a small metal box. It holds a retro-style video game called The Glass Realm, an old fantasy role-playing game. During gameplay, he meets a seemingly unassuming side character named Ruby. But as Ash delves further into The Glass Realm, he realizes it is more than it seems, and Ruby is more than just a small character; she can actually rewrite the game. Hakeem, Ash's good friend, worries that Ash is becoming a zombie virtual reality addict, but Ash is more worried that the virtual reality is the reality. Readers will be enticed by this sci-fi thriller, which is action-packed and full of interesting, diverse characters. Khoury's intuitive gamer sense permeates these pages. VERDICT Video game fans will love this book. Recommended for juvenile sci-fi collections.—Lisa Gieskes
Kirkus Reviews
2023-03-14
A gamer in the real world and an AI in a virtual one team up to tackle both corporate baddies and personal crises.
Setting her thriller a few years into a high-tech surveillance state future but basing it on universal themes, Khoury pairs 13-year-old Ash Tyler, trying to escape his widowed mother’s vicious boyfriend by losing himself in a VR fantasy called Glass Realm, with 13-year-old white-haired, red-gold–eyed Ruby. At first, he takes her to be an NPC in the game, but she turns out to be a powerful, curious intelligence who is really good at slaying virtual monsters. This, it quickly develops, is because she’s an escaped cyberweapon developed by Syntheos, a ruthless security corporation that will stop at nothing to get her back. Fast and furious escapades through a futuristic Manhattan lead to both good chemistry between the leads and two assaults on the heavily defended corporate headquarters (“It looks like a middle school,” remarks one kid). The first is a disastrous one that leaves Ruby recaptured and reprogrammed; the second is a rescue that works because Ash finds a way to reawaken in Ruby a suppressed curiosity about feelings and self-awareness that leads to restored independence of thought and an upbeat ending. Ash reads White; names cue ethnic diversity in the supporting cast.
Exciting and fast paced, with provocative notions to ponder about what makes us human. (Science fiction. 9-13)
