Heir Apparent

A fun spoof of medieval fantasy and gaming, about a girl who gets trapped in a "total immersion" virtual reality game--she's a peasant who inherits the throne of a kingdom, but the other royal siblins want her dead, as does the barbarian king, and she has to make all sorts of decisions and fight for her life, literally: if she doesn't win the game, it'll fry her brain and she'll be dead in *real* life! very silly but fun. I loved the "Groundhog Day" aspect, where she makes the wrong choice and 'dies' in the game, having to start all over again with the same scenario. There are clever jokes about being anachronistic in medieval times, and the heroine Giannine is spunky and has a droll sense of humor which I liked.

Giannine Bellisario is the heroine of Vivian Vande Velde's Heir Apparent. It's her fourteenth birthday and she's in a bad mood. Sure, the gift certificate for Rasmussen Gaming Centers is what she wanted, but her father had his secretary handle it. It sounds as if her father doesn't take much notice of her. This is obviously set either in the future or on an alternate Earth where technology is more advanced than on ours. The setting is Rochester, New York. The bus Giannine takes to the center has artificial intelligence and doesn't want to let her off because CPOC {pronounced See-Pock, and standing for 'Citizens to Protect Our Children') is holding a protest there. Giannine's description of CPOC is quite unflattering. I would also have show more detested them when I was a teen. Luckily, as an official little old lady (65), I get to figuratively thumb my nose at such overprotective twits.

The bus was correct to not want to leave Giannine there. The benighted CPOC members break into the gaming center and break some of its equipment. The stakes are raised for Giannine. I chuckled at her reaction when a hologram of o=CEO Nigel Rasmussen appeared to explain what happened. I chuckle a lot at Giannine's reaction. It's one of the reasons I keep rereading this book.

I enjoyed the description of the Rasmussen center in the first chapter, especially the receptionist's little genetically engineered dragon. We're told a little about games Giannine could choose to play before she settles on "Heir Apparent".

These total immersion games are supposed to seem real to all five senses. I chuckled at Giannine's comments about the smells as she finds herself to be a shepherdess named Janine de St. Jehan, daughter of lowly village peat cutter. She has artificial memories of a loving family before she meets Sir Deming, who tells her about her biological parents. Giannine is impatient to get the show on the road, so she screws up. In fact, she screws up a lot. How she keeps getting killed is quite entertaining.

I can't help but wonder if the ghosts of Fairfield were named in honor of "The Ghost-Ship" by Richard Middleton. Anyway, The entire book is entertaining and funny. I've even bought a copy for my best friend's birthday gift.

Cat lovers are out of luck.
Dog lovers get brief scenes with Dusty, a sheep dog.
Dragon lovers get one enormous one and one hamster-sized one. show less

A teenage girl named Giannine receives a girl certificate for a virtual reality arcade for her birthday, and she chooses to be fully immersed in a medieval-fantasy scenario where she has been named the heir of the kingdom over her estranged father’s three trueborn sons. She’s only supposed to be in the game for half an hour, but when protesters break in and damage the machine, the company loses the ability to get her out using normal methods. She has to beat the scenario and survive to be crowned queen - but her character keeps getting killed, and her time is running out.

Heir Apparent isn’t an example of great literature, but it is an example of fun literature. Giannine is a snarky protagonist that it’s very easy to get attached show more to, and the virtual reality game itself is one that many modern-day fantasy fans would absolutely love to get their hands on. The premise doesn’t disappoint in execution, either - the flexible nature of the game means that a character who kills Giannine in one life might ally with her in another if she makes slightly different choices, and vice versa, so figuring out who’s being genuine and who wants her dead is a constant struggle. It’s an incredibly engaging book, and I really recommend it to any fantasy or video game fans. show less

Fun, fun, fun. Girl is trapped in a total-immersion gaming system. The protesters at the game place remind me of the protesters at women's health clinics. Jerks. I'm recommending it to middle-grade kids indiscriminately.

Giannine is excited to use her virtual reality game gift certificate she got for her birthday. After carefully browsing the options, she chooses to play Heir Apparent, where you are the heir of the kingdom and have to make the right decisions to take the throne. But just after starting, something happens and the immersive reality machine is damaged. Giannine is stuck inside the game, and if she doesn't win the game, they might not be able to get her out of the game without permanent brain damage...

This was a lot of fun -- sort of a medieval groundhog day situation. I wish I had read it when I was younger because I think I would have loved it then. 4 stars.

Lots of fun, especially for video game fans. Giannine tries a virtual reality RPG must complete the quest - to take over a kingdom and survive the many assasination attempts. However, there's real world sabotage by CPOC (Citizens to Protect our Children) resulting in a game malfunction. Now Giannine must beat the game quickly, or have severe brain damage. Unfortunately, she's not much good at it, and keeps getting virtually killed and having to do the same scenes over and over, with variations. Anyone who has gotten stuck in some stupid level that should be simple BUT ISN"T, will relate. And laugh.

Review originally found on Looking Glass Reads.

Heir Apparent by Vivian Vande Velde is the story of fourteen year old Giannine who becomes trapped within a game which shares the book’s title.

I actually read this book when it was first released way back in 2002. I’d found it on the new release shelf in the library, brought it home, and absolutely loved it. I loved it so much, in fact, that it’s been a mental marker on how well other books that play on the trapped in a video game plot were judged against, perhaps a bit unfairly as I was only fourteen at the time and haven’t reread the book until now.

Well, guess what I stumbled upon at a used book sale!

Something I didn’t know – either back when I was fourteen or when I picked show more the book up for the second time a few days ago – is that this is part of a trilogy. Why so surprised? It doesn’t actually say so anywhere on the cover. Or the dust jacket. But, according to Goodreads, this is, in fact, the second book of a trilogy about the Rasmussem Corperation. Each book has a separate protagonist, though, and can be read as standalone novels. So if you don’t want to commit to a full series, you don’t have to.

Heir Apparent is told in the first person perspective of Giannine Bellisario who uses a gift certificate she received for her fourteenth birthday for a day at Rasmussem Gaming Center. The fifty dollars from her father will get her 45 tolkens for the regular arcade or a half an hour on a total immersion VR game. Obviously she picks the latter and starts up, you guessed it, a game titled Heir Apparent. The group of semi peaceful protestors Giannine passed on her way in grow more restless and break into the facility while she’s in-game. The damaged equipment won’t allow the tech’s to simply shut the game down without causing lasting and potentially fatal damage to Giannine. The only way for her to safely leave the game is the old fashioned way – to beat it.

Okay. No problem. Except, while she definitely enjoys video games, she doesn’t get to play them all that often and can’t seem to get past level 1, let alone win the game.0

While other books with video game related plots sometimes fall short for me, this one doesn’t. This is for two main reasons – the video game itself, and the way the VR tech and ensuing problems are treated.

This book does something that almost no other video game related book manages to truly capture. This really does feel like the main character is playing an RPG. It has all the elements of a good RPG, particularly those from the 90s. Think franchises like Final Fantasy, ‘Tales of”, Star Ocean, and Chrono Trigger/Chrono Cross. That is why this book is just so good.

The flags Giannine encounters – those seemingly innocuous character meetings and such that normally trigger things like cutscenes and dialogue choices in real-world video games – really are the sort of encounters that would and do happen in games. The boy caught for poaching is one example of this, as is Giannine meeting the royal family, and, maybe most obviously, the very beginning of the game with her family. (Let’s face it, we’ve all missed quest lines because we left the starting area too quickly and didn’t do the fetch-quest that unlocks the super special item you need late game).

I like that Giannine fails. I like that she doesn’t know what she’s doing. This makes her a very approachable character, more so than main characters in similar books and anime. A video game genius Giannine is not. It’s easy to relate to her – especially when I was also fourteen, loved gaming, but only owned two or three games.

The VR tech feels logical without the novel every going very in-depth about the science behind it. So how does it work when it isn’t mentioned too much? World building. The world Giannine lives in is very clearly ahead of our own, especially when the novel was first released. The busses are all driven by an AI interface. There are hologram pets. There isn’t one or two VR games, but many of them. Single player, multiplayer, and many different genres and age categories exist. At no point do these VR gaming systems feel as if they are new tech.

Giannine getting stuck in the game has nothing to do with evil geniuses, issues with brand new software, or other tropes we’ve seen before. The protesters broke in and damaged expensive, state of the art equipment. It’s the mental overload that’s the problem, the information density, the remembering a life that isn’t yours. I also like that they have to keep these games short due to limitations and dangers to the human body, something not quite delved into with other trapped in a game media in as much detail as maybe they could.

There is a bit of mixed media thrown into the book as well. We are given reports from Rasmussem Corporation regarding the protestors, the physical and mental state of Giannine, and the repairs to the equipment. These really added to the narrative, reminding the reader about the more physical and lasting damages that could befall Giannine at times when she is more concerned with things like dragon attacks.

However, these do taper off near the end where, I feel, they were needed the most. It felt odd that the real-world danger we are reminded of every other chapter near the beginning wouldn’t be more prevalent near the end where the stakes are much higher. A more nitpicky issue is the character’s name. While in the video game world her name is Janine. In the real world it is spelled Giannine. To me, this is frustrating. I’m not a huge fan of using common names with alternate spellings in general. Also, since the vast majority of the story takes place in the video game world, the main character is most often referred to as Janine. When we finally did get back into the real world I honestly wasn’t positive who Giannine was since she was referred to with a differently spelled name for the last several chapters.

Heir Apparent was a great read, bringing together elements of science fiction and fantasy, and perfect for fans of young adult and middle grade books. The first person narration and some great characters makes this a fun, quick read. This is a book well worth the picking up. show less