Excellent speculative fiction, Lots of twists in this one which kept me reading. Thanks to Netgalley for the opportunity to read this book

Let me start by saying, the story is good, but there are things that I didn’t really enjoy and others that didn’t really make sense, at least for me… but let me break it down, I did like the idea of the virtual world and that what you felt in the virtual world you felt as it was in the real world, this would make almost impossible to differentiate reality from the cloud world, this was a plus to me, but if the virtual has this much power, why bring a image of a mantis to the real world to rip people, that shouldn’t be necessary… the mythology is also very much present in this book, Babylon, the ancients gods and demons.

I felt that it relied too much in intrigue, the moral choices were very much gray all over and that is OK, but our main character felt to me that he kind of swung with the wind… I also didn’t enjoy the importance of sex during the whole book, I wouldn't recommend this book to young readers as we have several graphic sexual scenes in the book, first with Kristina, and later with Mitsuko, but for me this was really weird since he at first hatted her… even if you join forces with someone to take other down you wont do the “dirty” if you hate someone…

Basically our main character is offered eternal life, in exchange of finishing a “game” that will kill all non necessary people… the boss of our main character also want to kill the other board leaders for him to “rule” everything, but will he let Blaise live after his usefulness is over? Well that is for you to find out ;)

if you like everything I said I don’t and all that I said is on the book, you will probably love this book, because like I said this is well written, I just wasn't the right reader for it…

Thank you NetGalley and BooksGoSocial for the free ARC and this is my honest opinion.

The author has created a master work. The first of many, I would wager. This dystopian novel grips the reader from the start. It speaks to the latent fears we all have when we look at the separation of class, power, and the fears that we want to deny given the possible direction that our species could go. Thank you Robert, for addressing this, and doing it in such a compelling and entertaining way. I see great things ahead with this work, and you are beyond talented.