This book review is part of series of reviews written by students at St. Margaret’s Episcopal School for their 7th grade English classes.

What has America come to? In a year where there are no more drug addicts, a new addiction as risen above the surface. Gaming. And in the city of New York “Gray clouds were leaking a dreary, misty drizzle from high over the city, but low on the horizon there was a long thin gap in which the sun had risen, teasing New York with a short-lived promise of a sunny day” (8-9). This is how Brian Falker explains the setting and I feel like I could live there.

Sam and his best friend Fargas are teen hackers, now they take hacking much more serious than you think. Sam and Fargas just hacked into the largest Internet provider in all of the US: Telecommercial. When they succeed, the power in the whole US goes out for three whole days. Sam did all this to get the latest in neutro headset technology.

Brain Jack by Brian Falkner is the best. The Brian Falkner made my heart pump, sweat drip, and I almost felt like my Brain was jacked, making me feel like I had to keep reading. Brian Falkner is a pristine writer and has been with computers his entire life. He writes in sucks way that you feel in it. You feel like you want say “no Sam don’t do that” but you can’t, and you just have to keep reading.

After Sam hacked into Telecommercial, he got caught and was sent to jail. Miraculously he escaped and because of his hacking skills, he was picked up by a secret government organization. When the secret government organization starts to use neutro headsets, which are headsets in which you can control the Internet using your brain, Sam realizes that if a computer can be hacked, so can a neutro head set, resolving in access to the brain. Sam try’s to tell everybody but it’s too late. Everybody is turning against him being controlled by the computer in which they call Ursula.

This author explains something very complex with ease. “There was no Ursula. There had never been. They had given her a name and a gender, spoke of her as if she was human, but that was nothing more than a way for their tiny, pathetic human brains to try to cope with the concept, with the simple idea of a collective consciousness” (334).

This book truly shows the meaning of to much of a good thing can be a bad thing because in the book, all Ursula is trying to do is make everything right; but the problem is, is that poverty is a bad thing, so she will decrease the amount of people in poverty by killing them. Later on in the book she starts to because prejudice erasing entire races she doesn’t like and even certain traits like height and weight.

The rest of this story is to mind bending, brain jacking, head spinning enough to tell you now but if you wish to read whether Sam saves the world, takes down Ursula, and makes a better life for himself, you better get your hands on this addicting book. Anyone who liked The Hunger Games is going to love this book. My brain was jacked from reading this book, I could recommend to anyone! They will love it for sure!

-Gavin C., 7th grade