HEIR APPARENT

Giannine’s 14th birthday present is a gift certificate to a futuristic arcade. There she elects to play a medieval virtual reality game and becomes the illegitimate daughter of a king who names her heir to the throne. When the electrical currents at the arcade are disrupted, Giannine must finish the game successfully, or a system overload may fry her brain. However, dying in the game is not a problem--it just starts over from the beginning (again and again). After the third start, Carine Montbertrand’s plodding delivery makes wanting to continue difficult. There’s not much character delineation and little variety to the pacing. However, Giannine is a lively, sympathetic character plunked down in the middle of a rollicking good story. S.G. © AudioFile 2005, Portland, Maine [Published: AUG/SEP 05]