Review: Bluescreen (Mirador #1) by Dan Wells + Giveaway

Hi everyone! Today I’m excited to share with you my thoughts on BLUESCREEN, a first of a new series by Dan Wells, author of the PARTIALS SEQUENCE. Oh, and make sure you get to the end; there’s going to be a giveaway! Let’s get started!

Bluescreen

by Dan Wells

Genre: YA Science Fiction, Dystopia, Fantasy, Action,

Publication: February 16, 2016 by Balzer & Bray

Series: Mirador #1

Format: eARC from publisher

Rating: ★★★ ☆☆

Los Angeles in 2050 is a city of open doors, as long as you have the right connections. That connection is a djinni—a smart device implanted right in a person’s head. In a world where virtually everyone is online twenty-four hours a day, this connection is like oxygen—and a world like that presents plenty of opportunities for someone who knows how to manipulate it.

Marisa Carneseca is one of those people. She might spend her days in Mirador, the small, vibrant LA neighborhood where her family owns a restaurant, but she lives on the net—going to school, playing games, hanging out, or doing things of more questionable legality with her friends Sahara and Anja. And it’s Anja who first gets her hands on Bluescreen—a virtual drug that plugs right into a person’s djinni and delivers a massive, non-chemical, completely safe high. But in this city, when something sounds too good to be true, it usually is, and Mari and her friends soon find themselves in the middle of a conspiracy that is much bigger than they ever suspected.

Dan Wells, author of the New York Times bestselling Partials Sequence, returns with a stunning new vision of the near future—a breathless cyber-thriller where privacy is the world’s most rare resource and nothing, not even the thoughts in our heads, is safe.

 

Thank you to Balzer & Bray for providing me with this book in exchange for an honest review.

When I first saw the cover for BLUESCREEN (yes, I do judge a book by its cover), I was immediately interested; the darkish tint and the city background really made it pop. I went into this book with pretty high expectations, and I was not disappointed.

BLUESCREEN follows a girl named Marisa and her close group of friends in a futuristic world in which people connect with djinnis, devices implanted in nearly everyone’s head. So when one of Marisa’s friends, Anja, gets ahold of a new virtual drug called Bluescreen, and strange things keep happening, Marisa and her friends has to find out what truly is going on.

This novel was incredibly complex and interwoven with so many intricate details. Like the PARTIALS series (if you’ve read them), this book explores a deeper and complicated history (and present!).Wells leaves many clues and sort of connects them for you so it’s incredibly interesting to see how everything fits together within the whole picture.

There were several characters and each of them has their own little quirk. The pacing is somewhat irregular: sometimes fast, sometimes slow, but overall, the story flows with little to none boredom. Another aspect I really enjoyed was the relationships between all the characters. Marisa has an estranged older brother, a complicated history between her parents, and friendships that contain tensions and realistic aspects; even though the novel is set in a futuristic setting, it includes aspects from present-day life.

Overall, if you love interesting and deeply complex stories with a virtual/cyber twist, definitely check BLUESCREEN out. You won’t be bored.

Rating: ★★★ ☆☆

Dan Wells is a thriller and science fiction writer. Born in Utah, he spent his early years reading and writing. He is he author of the Partials series (Partials, Isolation, Fragments, and Ruins), the John Cleaver series (I Am Not a Serial Killer, Mr. Monster, and I Don’t Want To Kill You), and a few others (The Hollow City, A Night of Blacker Darkness, etc). He was a Campbell nomine for best new writer, and has won a Hugo award for his work on the podcast Writing Excuses; the podcast is also a multiple winner of the Parsec Award.

Prize: Win (1) of (2) copies of BLUESCREEN by Dan Wells (US Only)

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