Review: Demons, destruction and virtual reality in Minnesota
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 12 3, 2011
In postapocalyptic Minnesota, demons have been warring with humans and now run free above-ground. Society has divided, with some still living topside in protected but flourishing communities while others have gone underground, choosing to dedicate their lives to technology and experiencing life mostly in a virtual world.Marci is a tech living below, her specialty being perfecting the avatars for the virtual plane everyone uses for long-distance or group communication or pleasure. She's hiding a big secret that she's worried is about to come out - with techs vanishing for what she thinks may be DNA scans, she's afraid it's only a matter of time before her demon half is revealed. She isn't given much time to worry about it - a critical breach in the security of compound sends her running for safety, joined by the mysterious, sexy and obvious top-lander that she saw earlier.Gabe's own half-demon recognized Marci's half-demon summoner power and he was determined to get her alone. Now that the two of them are trapped underground for however long, he needs to convince her that her place isn't in this stale, emotionless environment, however safe she thinks she is. She was made to live above ground and be claimed by another half-demon - and he knows just the man for the job.Now I know that part of why I loved this is that I play video games and I really got the whole usage of people stepping in and out onto the virtual reality plane, assuming avatars and navigating through places that were representations of real places but not real until they stepped back out. The story is short and quite a bit of the information in it comes out in the virtual plane because Gabe keeps getting yanked into it by the ruler of his community - so it's stuff Marci is unaware of even though she's physically with him.Gabe and Marci got together very fast. There's probably a parallel that can be drawn between the relationship between a summoner and a demon and maybe werewolf bondmates. They're drawn to each other because they have to be. In this case, there's a twist (that I'm not revealing), one that makes Marci hugely valuable to the topside community and makes the relationship with Gabe dangerous even though they have a connection they want to act on, biological or chemical need be damned.The sexy times between Marci and Gabe are of course, hot and hotter. They have their own issues with how to separate the natural urge to be with each other because of what they are and the need to be with each other because of who they are - and when they get it right it's delicious and smoking at once.I liked that there was a decent amount of space given to showing what the world is like in the topside community. Gabe's friends are introduced, Marci experiences her new freedom and conversely sees new rules and punishment.In the novella format, I never expect perfect world-building or character realization, but I'm interested in where this is going. I especially like the idea of the virtual plane (I watched a lot of Tron and play too much Xbox 360, I know) and flying zombies and am hoping if Rogers destroys more of Minnesota, the Packers will continue to win the Super Bowl.