Item - CyberHacker

I expected something much more bonkers than this was.

After you and your friend Greg attempt to hack into some business (?) location in the "Cyberverse," you are paid a visit from the Cyberverse Police. This spins off into directions involving some evil mastermind running a game / trap. Or something like that.

One area where this book did things right is within the writing. Anson Montgomery avoids using words that already have clear meanings. There is no mention of RAM, or specific measures of computing power. But it IS built on the idea that somehow, everyone would want to use virtual reality in order to research things.

The book suffers from some annoying inconsistency, bringing down what could have been a fun, mildly silly read. There's also a more serious error. One of the paths mentions needing to save a character Hereon, who you haven't met. Hereon is introduced in a different path.

Not to mention, the little twist that happens with one of the endings directly contradicts some of the establishing scenes.

This is one of the harder books to get a hold of. Despite the high price, it's not quite worth it, except for completists.

More reviews by Jordashebasics

In what ways did technology change between 1998, the year CyberHacker was first published, and 2098, when the story is set? Most of society's commerce, socialization, gaming, and other activities now take place in the Cyberverse, a virtual reality world that has elevated the possibilities for adventure while retaining the vices that have plagued humanity since time immemorial. An amateur cyberhacker, you are so good at your craft that your school hires you to troubleshoot cyber issues despite your only being in ninth grade. One afternoon you and your friend Greg do some minor illegal hacking in the Cyberverse's industrial sector, but breaking into a nondescript brown building backfires on you when its security measures turn out stronger than expected. It fries your expensive VR equipment, but at least you seem safe from legal repercussions...until an anonymous message pops up on your computer. Someone knows what you did and is demanding a meeting in real life, but is it safe to show up as your actual self?

Paranoia grabs hold if you ignore the message. You take precautions and secure your online files, but are alarmed one day by an abnormality among them. The trap yanks you into the Cyberverse in a scene with strange-looking trees and white gorillas that attack on sight. If you leap inside a shimmering red spot midair you are confronted by an old man and his monster pet, Gorgo. The man owns the building you and Greg tried breaking into, and he intends to toy with you until you die. Escape is difficult, but if you get back to the real world you discover the police are on the old man's tail and need your help. The old man is a coding genius and craves revenge on you, but if the police step just right, they'll nip the threat in the bud before he causes devastating harm in the Cyberverse. If you never enter the red spot, you'll meet a girl your age named Heran who is fleeing the gorillas. She claims to have been stranded here for a year. You can traverse the swamp together for a way out, or take on the game's challenge rounds, but die while doing so and you may die in real life. Satisfying endings are few and far between.

Agree from the first to meet the anonymous message sender, and you learn it's Shenda, a girl from school. Deputy Shenda, that is, a youth operative of the Cyberverse Police Force who is aware of the illegal trick you and Greg pulled last night. Shenda requests your help to investigate the building that repelled your hacking attempt, but you get the feeling that refusing her offer might land you in jail. You go to the Cyberverse to validate her credentials, and are arrested there by police on charges of kidnapping Shenda. You have the knowhow to abort the program and maybe evade a police manhunt in the real world, but meeting the accusation head-on allows opportunity to prove your innocence. You suspect her abduction is tied in with the cyber-errands she planned on attending to the day you met. Backing off and letting the police work could be the safe route, but if you sneak into the Cyberverse on Shenda's behalf, you'll have all you can handle trying to extract her from her captor. The Cyberverse is cold and lethal when major criminals get involved, but can you outwit them and spare Shenda a horrible end?

CyberHacker is one of the least internally cohesive Choose Your Own Adventures. Small choices you make can result in the villain being a completely different person. Shenda has two separate identities that interchange without any real explanation, and in one storyline Heran is mentioned numerous times as a character despite your never meeting her. As the penultimate entry in the original Choose Your Own Adventure series, it seems this book was a rush job without standard quality checks done. That's a shame because some of Anson Montgomery's tech ideas are potentially brilliant narrative devices. The Well, a place in the Cyberverse where you exchange your own dark personal secrets for ones uploaded by other people, could be the basis of an award-winning novel. CyberHacker is worth reading for its intriguing raw material, but the author didn't get the mileage he should have out of this premise.

More reviews by KenJenningsJeopardy74