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Message: <blockquote data-quote="spacemonkey" data-source="post: 1708557" data-attributes="member: 13180">I got my copy of Idlewild way back in July sometime, and it looked like it was a bit short to start on until almost discussuion time.  I held out pretty well, but Jury Duty forced my hand at last <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />  so I finished it about 2 weeks ago.Pretty good overall, though I was a bit disappointed at the ending (more on that later).What I liked:*The IVR environment descriptions, and each student's 'personal space'.  I'd probably come up with something equally far-out (though maybe not as strange as Fantasia's set-up), but I was a little surprised that there was no mention of major changes to their environments.  I would probably change my virtual decor once a month or so if given the opportunity, like my desktop background.  Maybe it was a lot of work, tweaking all those settings...*The file system, with your fingers literally 'doing the walking' through it.  Probably quicker than a voice system, even with good voice recognition.*The interludes of their scientist creators, and glipses into the dying of humanity (all except for the very long one, seemed to break things up too much for me).  *The initial unfolding of the amnesia combined with the IVR.  I liked discovering the book-world along with the main character, then jumping off once I was planted firmly in the world and knew what was going on.*Nightgaunts fighting zoot suited smileys - what's not to like? <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" />*The school atmosphere.  I thought the cliques, chiding, over-achievers, and disenfranchised students were well done.  A believable small, elite school atmosphere.*The kids having immune system problems out of the pods.  Even if you can engineer immunity to all sorts of things, a lot is going to change in 18 years, especially with the dominant species going extinct.  Nice touch.*Maestro's punishment for Hal - buried alive.  Pretty nice, if you ignore the psychological ramifications.  Quite cruel and apposite, from a glitchy program's point of view.  <img src="http://www.enworld.org/forum/images/smilies/devious.png"  class="smilie" loading="lazy" alt=":]" title="Devious    :]" data-shortname=":]" /> Things I didn't like:*The PACE program's visual depiction.  Why would the secret, behind the scenes debugger even have a visual representation?  Or at least one that screamed 'I'm not normal, I don't belong here!" ?  It could have been an ordinary looking fly, or invisible or whatever.  No mention that it was trying to get anyone's attention, so why the obviously out of place 'spidery thing'?*Mercutio as the villain.  I didn't mind him being the villain so much as the fact that he wasn't fleshed out as much as some of the others.  No real attachment for the reader, so Hal's surprise and shock didn't really seem to bleed over into the reader like it could have if we'd been more emotionally attached.  Might as well have been Vashti or Isaac from my point of view.*Pacing of the ending.  Lots of time spent in the IVR descriptions, etc.  When it came to the end though, it sort of just sped by, dropped us at the final conflict and then it was done.  I think I would have liked to see a little more there, perhaps switching between Hal's group and Mercutio.  It would have been nice to see what he was doing, and I don't think the whole hand-waved 'he got some military hardware' would at all have been ruined if we got more info on it.  Would have made it more exciting to know Hal and Fantasia were walking into a trap (solves some of my problems with Merc as the villain too, if we could see some more of his motivation here, etc.)Overall, I liked the characterization (for the characters that were really fleshed out) and relationships between the students.  I liked the fact that Nick wasn't afraid to do the onion peel 'world in a world in a world' setting.  He didn't go too far with it, nor make it too obvious (though the scientist flash-backs were a big hint there).  The kids were messed up, at least a good portion of them were fatally flawed by the time they 'graduated' from thier computer upbringing.  Fantasia may not count, but Merc and Simone certainly couldn't hack it on the outside.I'm not sure I quite like the Gedaechtnis Company plan though:  Build 10 humans, genetically engineered to be immune to the major plague, then have them grow up, cure it, and clone humanity?  Seems a little out there to me.  What if they can't find a cure in their lifetime?  What about this Black EP?  Can it live without humans?  How?  Maybe it would already be wiped out by the time the kids grow up - even viruses have to reproduce and get power somehow, usually from their host.  Even with these questions, I didn't mind the premise too much though.  The book was pretty short, and it didn't go into specific detail on these things, so I can give the author a little leeway.  I didn't see anything that seemed completely inexplicable anyway.Overall rating:  A quick, fun read.  Nicely done characters and enough virtual reality amusement to keep me reading.  Cool visuals of an earth barren of human life, even if they were brief.</blockquote>

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