A little top heavy but a very clever and enjoyable premise. Full review to follow

2.5 starsThis book was just one big tease. There was great set up and world building, lots of interesting characters, tons of hinted at intrigue, and soooo much tension. Then.....nothing. Just literally nothing. I feel like I was set up. This book was getting 4 stars from me until I realized that nothing was resolved and so much was still unanswered and there were less than 20 pages left. I guess the author forgot that a good story needs a beginning, a middle, and an END. (A descent ending not t...

"Green Valley" was a great concept but a poor execution. There wasn't nearly enough world building for what needed to happen here.Premise: Apple Computers and Steve Jobs (essentially) finally went too far and were forced to wall themselves off in their own independent fiefdom and the rest of society goes back to pre-tech days. No cell phones/smart phones, no surveillance, nothing. Children from inside the Apple facility start turning up dead. Police work ensues.The best parts of the book were ob...

An interesting concept with too little story. It meanders along at an easy pace, but in the end I felt nothing really happened.

I think an excellent mesh of crime, horror and science fiction exploring our relationship with Technology. Full review https://www.runalongtheshelves.net/bl...

Stanton is a place where intrusive technology is forbidden, and then there’s Green Valley, where virtual reality has reached extremes. This scenario is quickly established and the story takes off fast with creeping unease rapidly spiking into clawing apprehension, then terror.The novel is set in the very near future, but with aspects of current reality to make it that much more disturbing. Clever building of suspense, and characters we care about, make for compulsive reading. Not just creepy, bu...

Shows what happens to a society where the virtual is the reality, and nothing is truly privateThe Turn – the people of Stanton set aside technology and decided to live an ethical, socially responsible life free of digital surveillance and control, abuse of privacy rights, systematic repression of dissent, complicity and conspiracy. However, some people did not, and Green Valley was created for them. Green valley is a quarantined enclave run by the Zeroth Foundation, flesh and blood people living...

Took me some time to get into it but there were about 140 pages where I couldn't put the book down.

Green Valley was a science fiction exploration of a world where people are divided into those with technology and those without it. The action was mainly psychological, so it seemed to more like a science fiction novel than a thriller. (view spoiler)[The mystery driving the story was tied up far too neatly by someone else to feel any real sense of victory. (hide spoiler)]But the setting was fantastic. The concept behind it was novel, and it was a cool world to explore with the characters. If you...

2.5 starsI received this book from Titan Books in exchange for an honest review.Lucie Sterling lives in a city that has banned all forms of invasive digital technology - that means no phones, no gaming, and no online databases that could result in a privacy breach. However, when children start going missing and bodies show up, Lucie is forced to enter Green Valley - a mysterious bunker shut off from the rest of the city in which the inhabitants live exclusively through VR simulation. As Lucie st...

Green Valley is a real slow burn of a novel, I'll admit it took me a little while to get into, but when it finds it's feet everything kicks up a notch or two. Lucie's analogue world feels quaint but immediately frustrating, thinking back to only being able to move as far as your telephone wire will let you, will certainly strike a chord! it's unsurprising, however, that there would be some who were so entrenched with the digital, that it would seem almost unthinkable to revert to payphones and p...

Review to come :)

Another underdeveloped and wasn't well thought through sci-fi about virtual reality. The premise as with The Fall or Dodge in hell was interesting but the ending was not satisfactory. I am wondering is it because of the writing talent or just authors cannot really imagine the full implications of VR to reality?

This was surprisingly good, especially reading it in the back of the synapse sequence by another author. Dystopian science fiction where what the world can become if we has really become some of my favorite lately. As a warning especially as we are slowly willingly handing tech access to everything from Echo, to Home, to Siri, which are always listening. These types of books really make the information that we are freely and legally giving these companies come to light. Read the terms and condit...

This book had some heavy tech vocabulary to weed through but also had some cool descriptions of particular moments of human behavior. I found it spooky and profound, which lead me down a rabbit hole of thought - what or whom can you really trust?! The logic did not seem entirely well thought out - how were women even conscious enough to birth babies when they were plugged into a virtual reality? Were there even hospitals at that point or just did the fetuses just drop on the floor? But in genera...

I really wasn't a fan of this book.While I did think it was very clever, different and original, the execution was poor.I went into this thinking it was a thriller. And while it does have thriller/mystery aspects, it definitely leans more on the sci fi side of things. If you like sci fi thrillers, I think you will really like this but I personally prefer my thrillers set in reality.For me, I found this book quite dull and boring. It didn't grab my interest straight away and I often found myself

Die Geschichte per se ist sehr spannend, da uns Louis Greenberg in eine dystopische Zukunft entführt, in welcher die Technik so weit ausgebaut ist, dass man mit Hilfe einer Linse und zusätzlichen Implantaten eine VR Welt sehen kann und sich darin bewegen kann. Die düstere Wendung tritt sehr früh ein und fesselte mich sofort. Jedoch kam der Höhepunkt der Geschichte für mich zu spät und das Ende schien für mich zu gewollt. Nicht nur erhält man zunächst das typische „und wenn sie nicht gestorben si...

Green Valley is a virtual reality enclave, sealed off from the city of Stanton by a giant wall. Stanton is part of a world that eschews all forms of invasive technology, having opted to regress to rotary phones and other outdated technology to help ensure the privacy of its citizens.Lucie Sterling lives in Stanton, but when Green Valley kids start showing up dead outside the wall, she is determined to get inside to find out if her dead sister's daughter is still safe.There are great insights int...

A virtual reality thriller, once again a dystopian view of technology, it would be great to read about an advance that actually succeeds and improves human nature. However, it was well written and credible, so would read another by the author. This is the last of my library books from before lockdown, so thrown back on the huge piles of books I’ve amassed.

An amazing premise I loved the storyline - it's quite thought provoking. I also appreciated the imagery when writing about Green Valley and the wonderful snippets of language at various interval. My only problem was the protagonist - I had to take breaks to get over my annoyance of her character and behaviour and finish the book. I'm unsure if the whiny nature of the character was supposed to reflect the result of the Green Valley experience or simply an attempt to write a female character. Eith...