Final Girls

Final Girls
Seanan McGuire, writing as Mira Grant, 2017

Premise: A new technology for completely immersive VR promises extremely effective therapy by causing the patient to feel as though they lived through a specific traumatic experience. A reporter is determined to determine whether it's a hoax.

I've liked all of McGuire's novellas so far, and this didn't break the streak. It's interesting that this was released under her horror pen name; it does fit that paradigm. The world created by the VR technology is less intriguing than the magic and ghosts in Dusk or Dark or Dawn or Day and a lot less inventive than the world of Every Heart a Doorway (which just won a Hugo!), but it's enjoyable nonetheless.

This one is a tense, short thriller in which, after everything predictably goes wrong, the main characters are trapped in an unreal dream that is trying to really kill them. It's more compelling than most spins on this premise, partially because it ties in strong themes of female rivalry and friendship.

I could have wished for some more satisfying twists on the way to the ending, but the way it is fits McGuire's sometimes fatalistic-poetic style.

3 Stars - A Good Book