First Fragment

The Kognition Cycle #1

by Brandon R. Chinn

“Welcome back to Midgard, Njorun. Sjaldan er ein báran stök. How may I serve today?”In the fall of 2074, twelfth-year Lisa Perdita has a lot on her keeping her grades up for university scholarship, spending time with her best friend Hayden Itagaki, and playing as Njorun, one of the most notoriously powerful PvP characters in the Global Multiplayer Game called Kognition. Her routine is shattered when Njorun comes across a dying player simply called ‘Sarah’ in an area the girl cannot possibly belong.Between diving into the World Animus Link Network, the massive global neuro-network that has replaced the Internet, and playing Kognition, Lisa’s relationships with herself and those she loves become drastically altered. Through the eyes of the memetic system that connects all users of the WoAnLiNe called ‘Neurolink,’ Njorun’s hunt for Sarah forces her to change in unexpected ways.Heavily influenced by Norse mythology and Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen epic opera, Kognition’s Midgard is an endlessly-evolving world of user created fields, sprawling dungeons, seamless player-versus-player combat, and fearsome monsters. As one of the ‘future children’ of a generation where the next evolution of the Internet is literally inside the heads of its users, can Lisa Perdita maneuver through the game and her own life in order to find the mysterious ‘Sarah’ without losing herself to obsession and angering the will of the corporation that runs it?

106 pages, Paperback

First published October 29, 2013

About the author

Brandon R. Chinn is a twenty-something that lives in the Pacific Northwest and spends most of his time writing, reading or playing video games. The Kognition Cycle: First Fragment + Second Stage and Kognition: Third Trial are available through Amazon, Createspace, Lulu, iBooks, and more.

Reviews

[Jesse Aubrey · Rating 5 out of 5]

If Kognition: First Fragment is a sign of things to come from Brandon R. Chinn, then the literary world has something to look forward to. Lisa Perdita is a beautifully fleshed out character that the reader can easily empathise with. The worlds of Kognition offer a seamless blend of different cultures and experiences without catering to any one group in particular.

Though the game focuses on an MMORPG, I honestly believe you do not have to be a fan of the genre to understand and enjoy the book. Chinn does an excellent job explaining things with his brilliant and obviously intelligent language. Kognition is probably some of the most artistic prose I've ever read in the science-fiction section of the literary world.

You should definitely pick it up!