posted on 22 Sep 2017

Senseless by Steve Cole

This is a cock-sure, sassy adventure thriller from the Young Bond author, Steve Cole. It’s perfectly designed for the younger reader who is probably much more comfortable with video games and comics than with books and serves up crackling action at high speed.

Kenzie, or K-Boy as he likes to be known, can’t believe his luck – he’s found himself the seeming winner of an international trip to take part in a video-gaming tournament on a mysterious sun-soaked island. He’s there as the guest of Sensia State, the leading developers of games consoles and all he can see is a great future ahead of him as a pro-gamer. But for K-Boy the dream is just about to turn into a nightmare.

At the reception in the hotel he meets Blink (real name Theresa) who is a straight-talking gamer who clearly likes to be thought of as ultra-cool and together they sample the drinks on offer – only to find that whatever they’ve been given takes them down a very dangerous rabbit-hole.

Waking up the next morning K-Boy finds he’s losing his senses – literally. He can’t see at first but when that returns he loses his hearing or his smell or even his touch and all around him are other gamers who are in an even worse state. Could it be that they are really being killed off systematically? And for what reason? Blink finds K-Boy just as his sight returns and they head off to try and find others on the hotel roof – but is this all real or have they found themselves part of an elaborate game?

K-Boy and Blink team up with Vik (The Viking) and Squirrel (master-hacker) and start their attempt to escape from what is rapidly becoming a living hell. But what is real here and what isn’t? Are they real people or just characters in a computer video game?

You’ll need to read it and decide for yourself and the trip is  a big-dipper ride of action and emotions. The graphics in the book are courtesy of Neil Evans whose background is in comic art and you can see this in the dramatic illustrations he’s provided to punctuate the story. The drawings are as fierce and action-packed as the writing and the two sit together perfectly.

The book has been produced in Barrington Stokes ‘super-readable’ format and it certainly lives up to that label in all senses of those words.

 

Terry Potter

September 2017