Fantasy in death
Ratings12
Average rating4.1
15
Ratings12
Average rating4.1
An Eve Dallas Investigation In Death
They were best friends, driven by one shared vision - to rule the world of virtual reality games. Cill, hard-edged and beautiful, Var and Benny, brains and business acumen, and Bart, the genius behind the idea. Their newest invention, developed to transport the player into a fantastical virtual world, is just about to be launched.
Bart Minnock, the founder of the computer-gaming giant U-Play, enters his private playroom, and eagerly can't wait to lose himself in an imaginary world, to play the role of a sword-wielding warrior king, in his company's latest top-secret project, Fantastical. The next morning, he is found in the same locked room, in a pool of blood, his head separated from his body, defeated by their own game. Their close-knit group is torn apart. Who could have engineered a virtual death with such devastating consequences?
It is the most puzzling case NYPSD Lieutenant Eve Dallas has ever faced, and it is not a game... Eve is having as much trouble figuring out how Bart was murdered as who did the murdering. The victim's girlfriend seems sincerely grief-stricken, and his quirky-but-brilliant partners at U-Play appear equally shocked. No one seemed to have a probA-lem with the enthusiastic, high-spirited millionaire. Of course, success can attract jealousy, and gaming, like any business, has its fierce rivalries and dirty tricks-as Eve's husband, Roarke, one of U- Play's competitors, knows well. But Bart was not naive, and quite capable of fighting back in the real world as well as the virtual one.
Eve and her team are about to enter the next level of police work, in a world where fantasy is the ultimate seduction-and the price of defeat is death... But as she digs deeper, peeling back layers of secrets, revenge and misplaced allegiances, she realises with growing dread the depth of the killer's master plan. And she knows his game is far from over....
Reviews with the most likes.
Fantasy in Death is an interesting take on the death-by-gaming plot that has previously been done by a couple of fantasy and science fiction authors, most notably in Niven and Barnes' Dream Park series. I doubt that most of Robb's readers will be familiar with the other books, as they're probably coming from the romance world (crossing over from her Nora Roberts titles) instead of the science fiction genre.
What hit me the most, though, was nostalgia for the dot com boom. The portrayal of the hot start-up company with its open, cheerful offices full of tech toys and energy, well-paid employees on fire with ideas and enthusiasm happily burning the midnight oil to work on exciting projects—I remember those days! Okay, the technology wasn't as advanced as the stuff in the book, but I can relate.
I always enjoy the portrayal of Dallas and Roarke's relationship as a mature partnership. It is a bit clich&ecuted at this point that every case has some aspect that justifies bringing in Roarke as a civilian consultant, but it's part of the formula. The sex is somewhat paint by numbers by now, too, but as prolific as Robb/Roberts is, I'm wondering if she has templates for different series and she has her own Stratemeyer Syndicate-type operation going on somewhere. (I've never read anything but the Eve Dallas books, so please take that as the joke it's meant to be!)
I was a little disappointed in the reveal, as I felt that the bad guy was too obvious. I won't say more, as I don't want to give anything away. I'll probably continue reading the series, but I'm past feeling an urgent need to grab them as soon as they come out, and this definitely isn't one of the few series that I could re-read and enjoy.
Featured Series
58 primary books69 released booksIn Death is a 69-book series with 58 primary works first released in 1995 with contributions by J.D. Robb, Nora Roberts, and J. D. Robb. The next book is scheduled for release on 2/4/2025.
