User Unfriendly

Rasmussem Corporation #1

by Vivian Vande Velde

It’s the most advanced computer role-playing game When you play you’re really there—in a dark dream teeming with evil creatures, danger-filled fortresses, and malevolent sorceries. The game plugs directly into your brain—no keyboard, no modem, no monitor. And for game hacker Arvin Rizalli and his friends, no cash up front, no questions asked . . . and no hope of rescue when the game goes horribly, deathly wrong.

Genres: Fantasy, Young Adult, Science Fiction, Fiction, Adventure, Middle Grade, Virtual Reality

402 pages, Kindle Edition

First published November 30, 1990

About the author

Vivian Vande Velde (born 1951, currently residing in Rochester, New York) is an American author who writes books primarily aimed at young adults.

Her novels and short story collections usually have some element of horror or fantasy, but are primarily humorous. Her book Never Trust a Dead Man (1999) received the 2000 Edgar Award for Best Young Adult Novel. She says that she really likes to write for children. She likes to do school talks to children. She does many book conventions and also gives writing classes.

Reviews

[Julie · Rating 3 out of 5]

I've read a few books about video roleplaying games. This one is different because it was written in 1990. The main character a few times would draw comparisons with tabletop gaming, which frankly is a more likely to be unfamiliar to the modern reader than the concept of a full-immersion video one. There were also a few instances where someone had to explain different concepts like the idea of the program being stuck in a loop.

Still, it didn't seem too dated beyond that.

Oddly, compared to other books I've read, very little of the action took place outside of the game. So that I never even really had a clear picture of what the 'real' world was like. Related to this, I felt the ending was very rushed, so that it almost had the element 'and then I woke up and it was all a dream'.

The other real negative I have to say about it is that one of the characters plays an 'Indian' and another a 'gypsy'. Even though the setting was more typical D&D type setting with wizards and orcs and whatnot. It's explained that the players can be whatever type of character they want, even if it doesn't fit with the setting. Which seems silly to me. And so it was unnecessarily racist. There's no reason that character couldn't have been a ranger or a huntsman or something, since the only thing he seemed to use his character type for was tracking and being stealthy. :P

Also, the blurb on the back is misleading and does not represent the contents of the book. The main character is not a 'hacker'. His friend is the hacker, although not even really that, since all it is is a pirated copy of the game. He doesn't seem to have done any actual hacking personally.

Oh, there was also a lot of fighting and action scenes and I find too much of that boring. So, yea.

[Katie · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book is a bit underwhelming. It took over the first 100 pages to really get into it. I have definitely read better by Vande Velde. For when the book was written I think it was forward thinking in the computer gaming concept. The ending was a little rushed and almost thrown together in a last minute way. There could be some room for improvement, but I did finally plod through it. I was still interested to find out what happened in the end, but it was just slow to get there.

I think there has been a lot of comparison to Heir Apparent. That was the first book I read by Vande Velde and it was very well written and interesting. I think this book just falls short of those expectations.

[Rob · Rating 3 out of 5]

Re-read of a YA book I liked a lot as a kid. Not one that stands up great as an adult, but I was quite fond of it when I was 10; I took it out from the library several times. Some interesting ideas that presage Stephenson's Snow Crash, though not nearly as in-depth -- protagonist is modern day and real world, but playing an unsupported, pirated version of an immersive VR fantasy game.

[Sarah · Rating 3 out of 5]

I really enjoy the setup the author has created where virtual reality meets old school gaming. entertaining and interesting. Had some racial stereotypes that were not appreciated, but unfortunately that is true of many of the games this book is based around as well.

[Anna · Rating 3 out of 5]

I did not enjoy this as much as the other Rasmussem books, mostly because there was a lot of infighting in the group. The game became a lot more than a game and not just because Arvin/Harek's Mom was in real life danger from it, so the anger carried over into the real world after the game experience was over.
Popsugar Challenge 2019: A LitRPG book

[Reeny · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 stars

I recently found out that one of my childhood favorites, Heir Apparent, had a prequel of sorts written about a decade prior. User Unfriendly was in no way at the same level as Heir Apparent-it was a mere shade. This book had your typical medieval game adventure story with a distant outside conflict, but there was a lot more that the book could have delved into, but that's okay because the author gets to it in Heir Apparent!

This book had lackluster, 2D secondary characters that were generally forgettable (Giannine, the protagonist of Heir Apparent, is only in your periphery. Arvin/Harek, the protagonist of this story who is very annoying. He complains about everything and is kind of a jerk. His casual sexism is very irritating as well. Whenever he is annoyed at something a girl does, he ascribes the negative characteristic to ALL GIRLS. He does not do the same for boys he is annoyed with.

Examples (anything that is relevant to the plot is under a spoiler tag:

"'Harek, do you have any money left?' Marian asked. 'We pooled our resources and bought some food supplies, but we'd like to take what's left and get a pack animal to carry all this stuff.' This wasn't a half bad idea. Dawn Marie was just too bossy for me to take her suggestions easily."

^typical situation of a guy being threatened by an assertive girl and resorting to call her "bossy"

"'Maybe,' Marian suggested...,'your head hurts because we missed lunch...Maybe we should stop to eat.'"

^very logical response about any human with a brain that needs nutrients. Let's take a look at Arvin's response below:

"Girl's reasoning. And dippy girl's reasoning at that. But after all, Mom was a girl too, and maybe Marian knew what she was talking about."

^why the hell is hypothesizing that a headache may be due to lack of food a stupid girl's idea? But maybe it might work because the person in question is a girl too? I'm sorry, I didn't realize men didn't have brains and digestive systems...

"'Obviously'--how come, I wondered, girls always have to talking that irritatingly superior tone of voice whenever they're explaining something?"

^only girls have an irritating superior tone when explaining things. All girls and only girls.

"She gave him the overly sweet smile girls do when they're feeling especially superior."

^ALL GIRLS DO THIS. ARVIN KNOWS THIS BECAUSE HE HAS SEEN ALL GIRLS DO IT. HE HAS NEVER SEEN A MALE WITH A SMARMY SMUG SMILE AND SUPERIOR ATTITUDE.

"'Felice is awfully weak,' Cornelius said. 'We'd probably better strap her to the horse.' Jerk, I thought. You think like a girl

^When Marian comes up with a logical idea that Arvin/Harek doesn't like, it's "dippy girl's reasoning". When a guy comes up with a logical idea, he is a a jerk because he "thinks like a girl."

But, I think the best part was when it was revealed that Marian was actually being played by a boy, Noah and his girlfriend, whom Arvin thought was playing Marian, was actually playing Robin Hood. SHOVE YOUR GENDER STEREOTYPES, ARVIN.

This book also tries to add some diversity and succeeds and in some aspects and fails in others. One of the gamers, and African American kid, plays a dwarf who is black in the game. Another one of the gamers has cerebal palsy IRL. These were both subtly and well done imo. But some of the diversity was cringeworthy and just perpetuated stereotypes. Arvin's mother played a "tavern wench gypsy thief" with "gypsy hair". Arvin also uses the word "gypped". Another gamer plays a Comanche chief who provides more stereotypes.

"The only exception was NOcona. Being Indian, he didn't have to bother with a saddle, and he seemed to have a natural way with horses."

and

"I gave a hand to Nocona, who hadn't stood up from examining the tracks. I half expected him to consider it an insult to his Indianhood or something."

I have to remind myself that this book was published in '90 though. And despite these few things, the book was still fun, and had me excited to reread Heir Apparent, which is where I think everyone should start.

[Jerry (Rebel With a Massive Media Library) · Rating 1 out of 5]

As someone who grew up around computers and old-school computer games, I should have enjoyed this...but I didn't; it was just all-around dreadful, especially the ending.

[Sharon · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another Rasmussem, not as good as Heir Apparent but better than Pink. I liked the main character, Harek/Arvin, and that he was clever but often came off at the weak link. Some of the other characters were really well done as well, others less so. Thea was kind of awesome. It was a nice touch that Shelton/Cornelius was handicapped in real life. The plot had some good twists, about the princess and the werewolf especially and how Marian and Robin were backwards, and the aftermath was well done, although I'm sad their gang broke up. I didn't follow the action scenes very well, which I think took away some of the drama for me. Since I've played a little D&D, I enjoyed those references, about the dungeon master and the dice. Lol. :) Enjoyable and original read.

[Denae Christine · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not as good as Heir Apparent, but User Unfriendly really does combine the elements of teenagerhood, fantasy, trust, sci-fi, technological failures, and reallife worry. The quest itself was very creative and twisted. The characters were good. Just enough, but no so many that it was hard to keep track of them.
I liked that Giannine Belisario got to be in two books, and I enjoyed the way the people cheated to play, and how Shelton was handicapped in real life, and how Arvin wasn't always completely clueless, and how the game kept backfiring.
Awesome with the "that" boots and whole werewolf thing.

[Becca · Rating 4 out of 5]

I did really enjoy this book, but it's not a very good book. It features the same Rasmussen as in Heir Apparent, as well as many similar features. It's much less repetitive, but the characters are equally shallow. My favorite moment was when Arvin (I had a hard time remembering that this wasn't his character name--it sounds Elvish) discovered who Noah was.

[Anica · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.5

I picked up this book after enjoying Vande Velde's pieces in Girls to the Rescue (review).

The premise is interesting, they're in a virtual reality, Dungeons and Dragons-esque game for what feels like five days, although it's only an hour in real life. The blurb for the book was rather misleading from the actual plot though. It made it sound like they would die for real if they died in the game, and as I read I wondered how that would happen since it would be quite the tone shift. Reading the blurb now after the fact, I see the mistake in my interpretation, but it still changed the view of the book.

I liked this book a lot in the beginning, was thinking maybe even a 4 star, but it slowed way, way down. When the characters were trudging, I was trudging. In particular when they were in the caves. It took me days to get through that part. I also really hated how the other characters treated the main character, and spent almost the entire book thinking how he needs to get a new groups of friends. This was never really resolved either, which bothered me too. They're just shitty to him the entire game, the one friend won't talk to him after because he mentioned he might be becoming a werewolf, and the elf girl says how she felt he was showing her up the whole game when he obviously wasn't. I'm not sad the group split up, go hang out with people that don't constantly treat you like you're a waste of space and annoying.

So good start, horrid middle, and then an ending that felt rather rushed and more like an epilogue. The writing itself was good though, even if the story was lacking in parts. It's one of her first books, so I'll give her another try.

[Kari · Rating 3 out of 5]

Vivian Vande Velde's Heir Apparent is one of my all time favorite children's books, so when I picked up this prequel for the first time at a warehouse Half-Priced Books sale last summer I thought I had stumbled upon childhood gold. Maybe my expectations were a little high but seeing that the cover had a wizard smoking a pipe hunched over a circa 1990 computer gave me a pretty good idea that the book might be a little more than bizarre. It definitely became more and more strange as it went, but the beginning was actually so derivative it bordered on plagiarism (okay that's kind of harsh, more just like lazy fanfiction). The story is basically organized within a table top game turned virtual reality game, which is a great premise. But many elements seemed straight from D&D, Lord of the Rings, and various high fantasy stories. For example, one of the characters obtained a sword named Orc Slayer that lit up with the words Orc Slayer when an orc was near. Sound familiar? And the giant rats found in the forest obviously stemmed from Princess Bride, a movie that had just come out about five years before this book. Maybe kids who were reading this book at the time hadn't read LOTR yet, but to me if you're going to do a high fantasy story, there has to be several new elements that make your world distinct. I will say that the story line with the mother's illness added a serious element that gave the story agency, and Princess Dorinda's backstory was interesting as well. Robin Hood and Marion's character twist was pretty fantastic too. There were some good things going on here, but ultimately, the second book in the series is superior and User Unfriendly could easily be skipped altogether... unless you are a diehard VVV fan like me.

[James Hogan · Rating 3 out of 5]

A perfectly average sci-fi/fantasy novel. Or at least, it's the book I grabbed for some light reading before driving out to San Antonio for mini-vacation. This book is competently written and I probably would have loved this if I'd read it in middle school. It's your basic VR-simulation/fantasy-RPG novel...I feel that all kids that grew up in the 90s loved these books (at least I did! What was the allure of the VR-simulation of a far past time? Maybe we thought this was our future and it was exciting to imagine ourselves as these kids?) Anyway, this book follows a group of friends (plus one mom!) as they participate in this simulated fantasy quest. There's some drama of course, a few touching moments and plenty of fun fantasy D&D-esque action. Part of the fun was trying to figure out which of the main kid's friends was which character in the simulation! The kids did a far better job than I would have of staying in-character, that's for sure. Anyways, this was a fun vacation read if nothing more.

[Kelly Nicholson · Rating 2 out of 5]

I had read the second book of this series, "Heir Apparent," in junior high, and I loved it. So when I realized that it was book 2, I thought that I would enjoy the first one. Sadly, I didn't care for "User Unfriendly" like I had thought I would.

First, I am not a fan of Velde's habit of dropping the reader into the action without providing a solid foundation for who the characters are and what is about to unfold. In fact, there were facts revealed at the very end of the book that I wish I had known as I read because it would have changed my perspective of what was going on.

Second, I didn't really connect with the characters, which affected my "whoopee-do" reaction to the adventure. Instead of being on the edge of my seat with the suspense, I was bored.

Perhaps it's because I am no longer in junior high, or because I am not a die-hard gamer, but "User Unfriendly" wasn't what I was hoping it would be.

[E Rachelle · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a fun read, if a bit (okay, super) predictable. I wish the story had followed Noah instead of Arvin because of a character reveal that could have been great. The real-world reveal at the end of the book is sadly irrelevant to the rest of the story. Noah has cerebral palsy. It would have been fascinating to see how he felt in a world where he was no longer confined to a wheelchair. As it is, the twist felt like a let down because I immediately wished I had seen Noah's perspective of the game instead of Arvin's. While this book isn't labelled as a sequel, I felt like I was supposed to know more about the characters initially than I did, as Arvin spends time trying to figure out who is playing which game character. Maybe I was supposed to know Noah from another book, in which case, it was my own fault for feeling cheated.
The character interactions are fun, the adventure perilous, and the various settings are cool, especially the tapestry castle.

[Ruby J · Rating 1 out of 5]

1) This is the 1st of a fantasy "series" where u don't have to read one to read another & it's basically abt VR gaming gone wrong but written before that existed.
2) The main characters are using it to play D&D

I'm not a fan. I've read Heir Apparent ("book 2" I believe) & loved it tho that was forever ago. This one just wasn't it.
Heir Apparent has a fMC; this one is a mMC. She plays alone vs he plays w/ his friends. Plus, Heir Apparent is "book 2" but explains the concept waaay better.

It's a group of 14yo boys plus a gf and a mom playing D&D as a video game and everyone, myself included, hated the whole thing. Like there's a mission that they go on a quest to solve and then, plot twist, what they thought they had to do wasn't accurate and someone almost died in real life after the video game but I just didn't care. There was no pull.
Idk; it's not for me

Tldr: read Heir Apparent not User Unfriendly

[Kirsten Simkiss · Rating 1 out of 5]

So I read these out of order and started with Heir Apparent. Heir Apparent is fantastic and I reread it recently. So, considering I liked book 2 so much, I was excited to backtrack and read the first book. All of them are separate stories in the same world so it wouldn't be too difficult to just jump in.

This book was NOT what I'd hoped for. It felt like every D&D group I'd ever avoided and the plot was honestly kind of predictable, jumping from trope to trope. The characters were basic and frustratingly toxic children. Maybe that was some of the point, but it was not fun to read. I will not be giving this book a reread, even though Heir Apparent has earned a permanent place on my bookshelf.

[Thom · Rating 2 out of 5]

The main characters hack into a virtual reality role-playing game. The narrator is a teen boy whose mom is in the game also. Utilizes aspects of dungeons & dragons, but is less PC than most books of the era. I understand a sequel, released 12 years later, is much better.

This book is one of the early examples of LitRPG, where characters enter (or are trapped in) an MMO, and that's probably how it ended up on my reading list. It is also the first Vivian Vande Velde I have read, and was apparently written for the young adult market. I will at least read the later book, to see what some of the hype is about.

[Lawrence Chiu · Rating 3 out of 5]

User Unfriendly is a book about a group of friends getting trapped in a video game. The genre is sci-fi, and it is the first book I've read by the author, Vivian Vande Velde. The protagonist, Arvin Rizalli, felt generic and boring. The antagonist was the game itself. I don't think the book was very well written because the story didn't provide any background information or how the game worked. The book wasn't really what I expected it to be, because the synopsis stated the game goes deathly wrong, but no one actually died in the game. Overall, I don't recommend this book because the synopsis isn't very accurate, and the characters feel boring.

[Sharayah Russell · Rating 2 out of 5]

Pretty disappointed. I read the sequel, Heir Apparent, as a standalone book growing up and it was one of my absolute favorites. I was so excited to discover it was part of a series, but this book absolutely did not live up to the same standard. The plot was slow and plodding, the characters were not terribly relatable, it really took until the last quarter of the book to really get interesting in a way that made me think about it when I wasn’t reading it. Just not a fan, kind of a bummer. Excited to read Heir Apparent again instead.

[Dani · Rating 4 out of 5]

I liked this book a lot. Though admittedly not as much as book 2: heir apparent.

The author writes in a YA style that’s great for what it is, it felt immersive enough, and I was pleased to have a high enough perception to track two of the early twists out (the headaches origin and their added companions affliction).

The writing was good but not great. And once again this book just makes me yearn for its video game companion as good immersive RPG is in high demand even now.

The author would have been excellent writing for a gaming company, I’d play every one.

[Katie · Rating 2 out of 5]

I've had this book on my shelf for ages and finally got around to reading it this year. I enjoyed it as a quick, light read. I found Arvin to be a whiny main character that I never connected with. I appreciated the table top references and old video game references. It was novel in it's ending to the quest and the hackers' real life ramifications. I disliked the ending and probably won't continue reading the series.

[Callan · Rating 1 out of 5]

yeesh. sexist as all get-out, plus racist and homophobic to boot. read it because I used to read Heir Apparent (the sequel) and remembered it as a fun snarky adventure book. This was not a fun snarky adventure book, unless your idea of snark is the sexist inner monologue of a fourteen year old boy who thinks all girls are walking stupid stereotypes. on top of that, very little plot, not engaging at all. none of the characters were likable either.

[Michael Davenport · Rating 3 out of 5]

3 stars: average

This book explores what would happen if you were stuck in a video game. It was a fun concept and has been done a lot recently, but this book was written in 1990, so it is more original.

I liked the main plot of the story about trying to get out of the video game, but the subplots were not as memorable.

Tags: clean, YA

[Rose · Rating 2 out of 5]

this book fairly accurately portrays the perspective of an awkward and insecure 14 year old stuck inside of a video game alongside his equally immature 14 year old friends. unfortunately, that inherently is not pleasant to read

[Nicky Nunney · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a cool read!

I enjoyed the fact that it was retro (published in the 90s, and the all the gaming in the book. Everything was realistic and my heart was in my mouth at points wondering where the story would go.

I'm looking forward to reading the next book in the series.

[Mikaela · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good adventure. Enjoyed the read but it seem to be missing something, not sure what through... Oh well recommend if you just want a quick fun story without a lot of hard confusing background to get through.

[Janna Craig · Rating 3 out of 5]

Definitely not as good as Heir Apparent, but still a fun read.

[El · Rating 5 out of 5]

Amazingggg! Loved the action and plot

[Gahermi class 5-12 · Rating 5 out of 5]

That book was definitely fantastic.