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416 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2012
From this description you could be forgiven for thinking that this is about following Billy into a VR (virtual reality). It's not. What is really happening is that Billy is desingning a game, one that is more like an Easter egg hunt with clues online, and the objects exist in the real world. Enough about that because any more and I will run into spoilers. Also it's because there was not much more to the story than that. One hint though; If you are familiar with the way mystery writers work, you'll see the culprit long before the reveal, as Olsen is a tad contrived about the whole pro/antagonist thing. My biggest problem with "Strange Flesh" is the technology makes very litte sense. You have practical VR's right along side your average PC. We're talking about tech that is right from this time period, and beside it is something that doesn't yet exist. I see from some reviews here on goodreads that people don't understand some of the tech references, but for me it's the attempt to marry the tech of now and the tech of tomorrow seamlessly. It doesn't work. Finally the main character James Pryce bothers me. I could never properly place him. First he started of as a hacker, kinda geeky but good with computers (the geeky part is rather stereotypical, but anyway...), then he shows himself to be a people person. Fine so far. Halfway through the book however, the author decideds that he must also be good in a fight, and have a gun. I could not define at any point through the book who Pryce was, so I could never truly connect with him. The one thing I will give Michael Olsen is that despite all these flaws, I still finished the book and was not frustrated while reading it (at least not any more than when reading other books.) So to finish off: