Velde writes young characters well. The dialogue feels real, brimming with humor and sarcasm at times. There are even a couple of character twists that I didn’t expect that were fun. Since the story's game is a pirated copy and the players are illegally in the virtual, there is some tension in the book regarding whether or not they will get caught and kicked out. The game also has some problems that creates further conflict for them.
Their main goal is to rescue a captured princess, but the driving pressure for Arvin and his friends is his mother’s steadily increasing illness. After a bit they figure out that she must have something wrong with her in the real world that’s causing her problems in the virtual one. This added element of desperation is really cool and compounds all mysteries they encounter while in the game.
User Unfriendly is a great book for reluctant young, male readers. If you can get a boy to read even the first chapter, I bet you’ll have him hooked till the end.
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