Gemini Gambit

Kimberley Trayne, a genius hacker once known as Angel Rage, is on the run after five years in hiding, with Mike, an AI freshly downloaded into a human body, and a geeky high school boy named Spencer as her only allies. She fends off Bolivian gangsters and eludes the FBI while attempting to defeat a conspiracy to take over the Evolved Internet—a virtual reality that exists in the world of Johnson’s debut, set 20 years in the future. It’s a cheerfully nerdy caper in which characters profess fondness for Terry Pratchett and a virtual model of a famous light sword makes an appearance. Johnson makes a conscious effort to develop a multiethnic cast of entertaining characters and mostly succeeds, but the story is overstuffed and overpopulated, and heroine Kimberley—a beauty who dresses frumpily in realspace but wears cat suits in the virtual realms—sometimes seems more like a programmer’s daydream than a well-rounded character. [em](BookLife) [/em]