Continue Online Part Four: Crash

By: Stephan Morse

Narrated by: Pavi Proczko

Length: 14 hrs and 57 mins

Publisher's Summary

Actions have consequences. Grant’s prior adventures tie together and he finds himself back in Continue Online, as Hermes - in jail. He's forced to experience life as a digital convict and earn redemption points to gain his freedom. Each in-game death pushes his goal of helping his friends out of reach. The AIs Grant’s grown to love, trust - and sometimes fear - are facing extinction, and he holds the key to their survival.

©2017 Stephan Morse (P)2018 Stephan Morse

Penultimate Act?

Morse does it again with a psychological sci-fi romp through danger, tragedy and the very essence of consciousness. Look I figure the only people reading a review for the fourth book are the ones who wonder if the next one lives up to its predecessors: yes, it might exceed the others actually.

Story recommend with reservations

This is a rare virtual reality tale with characters possessing a storyline with depth, consistent flow, and characters one grows to care about.
The story has two plot lines; the first is the impact advanced forms of virtual reality will have on a society embracing it, and how that society will react to the inevitable development of true AI. In this the author shows some true insight, happily avoiding the cliche of the evil corporations that seem to predominate in modern sci-fi. There are good characters and bad and each behaves in a way reflecting the characters ideology and values, logically advancing the story. The author should have stuck with this part of the storyline and found another way to motivate the main character., because had he done so, it could have been rated with Asimov’s Foundation series.
The second plot line, unfortunately is a childish love story so cliched, obsessive and poorly conceived it belongs in a teen romance. Its the plot a twelve year old girl would craft. (Mild spoiler)The main character looses his fiancé, whom he loves and misses, then discovers an echo of her in the VR program so he tries to go to connect with it. After discovery of this echo of his lost love, all he can do or think about is her. This obsession becomes quite tedious as the tale progresses, and while the love story is the main characters supposed motivation, the author needed quite a bit less of it. The protagonist speaks her name at least once per minute at times, as if we could forget it, and frames all of his grand decisions around how the result will affect her. At one point, with the fate of the whole virtual universe at stake, he admonishes his niece to make sure his fiancé isn’t hurt, ignoring that once the universe is gone, they’re all gone. It’s not cute, or heart warming, this guy is pathetic and his obsession is creepy. He’s more stalker than hero. Worse he likes to blame himself for things that go wrong, whether he was present at the time of the incident or not. This layering of guilt crops up a lot in pre teen books but is out of place here. We’re supposed,to see the main character as a reluctant hero, but dwelling on the past and wallowing in guilt is a behavior hero’s don’t engage in. If the author wants to understand heroic behavior and the love of a woman (which are fine and epic storylines), he should read the Odyssey first, where Odysseus spends ten years getting back to home & hearth. Obsessive behavior doesn’t fit a hero.

This second plot line caused me to actively dislike the hero and I found the story hard to finish, sometimes wishing he would die (his fiancé seemed stronger and more interesting) so the story would be less obsessive.

was good before

the first 3 books were good but this one sucks. refunded and done with this author

Edens gate is lame

Compare this series to Edens gate, and it will come out on top every time. It has a real story line not just repeated stats over and over just to fill a page to rip you off.

Felt standard

I don't like VR Litrpgs as a general rule. I am not interested in hearing a virtual world described because I can't be that far removed from my suspension of disbelief. Its hard enough suspending my disbelief for the story, but I can't for the story within the story. This series has mostly only had the game as a background element so its been enjoyable anyway. But this book felt like a standard VR book with the focus on the game itself. So I ended up skipping to the end. I realize I missed some important moments but not worth going backwards to find out what I missed.

Getting to the end

This was another good addition to the series. The series is getting better, book by book. I'm hoping it ends well.

Brilliant

This has been a brilliant book in the continue series. I am curious to see where the 5th book goes as the story feels complete. can't wait to have the 5th.