{"id":3236,"date":"2016-08-27T09:00:50","date_gmt":"2016-08-27T16:00:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/pasadena-library.net\/teens\/?p=3236"},"modified":"2018-03-13T19:06:31","modified_gmt":"2018-03-14T02:06:31","slug":"ya-book-club-the-eye-of-minds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/pasadena-library.net\/teens\/2016\/ya-book-club-the-eye-of-minds\/","title":{"rendered":"YA Book Club — The Eye of Minds"},"content":{"rendered":"

August Recap by Hadley Willman, grade 11<\/span><\/p>\n

The Eye of Minds<\/em> by James Dashner<\/h2>\n

The YA book club met this month to talk about <\/span>The Eye of Minds,<\/span><\/i> book one in the newly completed <\/span>Mortality Doctrine<\/span><\/i> series by James Dashner, fan favorite author of <\/span>The Maze Runner.<\/span><\/i> In this world, hardly any time aside from work, school, and sleep is spent in the real world. All you have to do is lie down in the Coffin, close the lid, let technology do its work, and you\u2019re transported to wherever you want to go in the wonderful online world of the VirtNet with all the smells, tastes, and sensory immersion needed to make it feel real.<\/span><\/p>\n

Michael is a gamer\u2014more specifically, a hacker. At his side are his best friends Bryson and Sarah, and together they make their way through the VirtNet, using their hacking skills whenever necessary to have a good time. Things go from fun to deadly serious when Michael is recruited by the government to catch a hacker in the VirtNet named Kaine who has been holding players hostage in the game. A person can\u2019t survive in the Coffin for more than a few days, and as a result, these captive players have been found brain-dead inside their Coffins\u00a0in real life. VNS, a Virtnet-specific government agency, wants Michael and his friends to use their hacking skills to track Kaine down for them before they deal the killing blow, but they can\u2019t help but ask themselves, if the government can\u2019t find a man in their own servers, how can three teenagers?<\/span><\/p>\n

Hope was high for members of the book club who had previously read the <\/span>Maze Runner<\/span><\/i> from this author, but almost everyone was greatly disappointed. Overall, the pace was too fast as the story jumped from one action scene to another, leaving no time to breathe and no time for character development. Each scene went by too quickly to leave that much of an impact on the readers. Before we had a chance to pause and think things over alongside the characters, the moment was over and they were moving on.<\/span><\/p>\n

One of the main problems for us was that the three main characters were practically interchangeable. They each did an equal share of the work along the way, but sometimes it even seemed like Bryson and Sarah were doing it all and left no room for Michael to take a leading role as <\/span>the<\/span><\/i> main protagonist. Throughout the book, he\u2019s treated like the \u201cchosen one,\u201d but nothing he does is incredibly special when compared to his friends. Their lack of distinct personalities also made it difficult for us to buy into the bit of romance Dashner tried to fit into the story.<\/span><\/p>\n

Another major question we had was: why did Michael and his friends accept this incredibly deadly task when they had first-hand experience of how being involved could end someone\u2019s life? The scene where the VNS explains what they needed Michael to do goes by way too quickly, and we agreed that they didn\u2019t do a good enough job to have convinced us to set our lives on the line if we were in Michael\u2019s place. Dashner seemed to rush a lot of scenes and as a result, everything seemed too easy.<\/span><\/p>\n

As a whole, we\u2019d be interested to see the book made into a movie because we thought the book had a lot of potential, especially visually. Dashner seemed to focus all his effort into writing detail on the surroundings of the world they were in, but left a lot of room to improve on giving each character their own personalities and letting them interact with each other in new ways. While the book was a visual feat, there were too many rushed scenes and too many rushed character interactions for us to make us want to continue reading the series, and we gave the book an average of 2.5\/5 stars.<\/span><\/p>\n

August Recap by Hadley Willman, grade 11<\/p>\n

\n

Find this book in our catalog: \u00a0The Eye of Minds<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

Call Number:\u00a0 YA SF\u00a0DASHNER,J<\/p>\n

310 pages<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

August Recap by Hadley Willman, grade 11 The Eye of Minds by James Dashner The YA book club met this month to talk about The Eye of Minds, book one in the newly completed Mortality Doctrine series by James Dashner, fan favorite author of The Maze Runner. In this world, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":34,"featured_media":3237,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":true,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[120,54],"tags":[49,145],"class_list":["post-3236","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-book-reviews","category-teen-reviews","tag-book-club","tag-teen-facilitated"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/pasadena-library.net\/teens\/wp-content\/blogs.dir\/18\/files\/sites\/18\/2016\/08\/eyeofminds.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5ZwbD-Qc","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":155,"url":"http:\/\/pasadena-library.net\/teens\/2013\/a-few-summer-book-reports\/","url_meta":{"origin":3236,"position":0},"title":"A few summer book reports","author":"","date":"August 15, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"Teens who entered our Summer Reading Club drawings were asked to write a few words about each book they read. 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Virtual reality is an artificial world created by a computer that is experienced through sensory stimuli.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Features"","block_context":{"text":"Features","link":"http:\/\/pasadena-library.net\/teens\/category\/opinion\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/d.gr-assets.com\/books\/1406383612l\/9969571.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":2398,"url":"http:\/\/pasadena-library.net\/teens\/2015\/ya-book-club-all-the-bright-places\/","url_meta":{"origin":3236,"position":3},"title":"YA Book Club — All the Bright Places","author":"Teen Blogger","date":"October 27, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"\u00a0 YA Book Club recap by Kara Eng,\u00a0grade 11 For October YA Book Club, we read All the Bright Places by Jennifer Niven. We discussed different aspects of the book. We decided that the romance was fairly conventional with the whole \u201ctwo broken teenage who meet each other. 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