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Entanglement
Gamer kids take on big tech, deep state agencies, and perhaps an even more sinister force in the sci-fi thriller Entanglement - it's a race against time to figure out a vast conspiracy and put their memories - and reality - back together.Collectible card game expert Zander Branch looks out at the start of his adult life and sees mostly delivering pizzas and taking community college classes. The only thing he's looking forward to is the launch of Mirror, an augmented reality video game offering real prize money. But that all changes when the mysterious Tokyo Kim walks into The High Castle, the local gamer haven, bearing a mysterious card emblazoned with a mythical creature from a game that no one, not even Zander, as ever heard of. It all seems like a minor mystery until Zander's friend, Davies, disappears. And it's not an ordinary disappearance - no one seems to remember Davies except Zander and Tokyo Kim.But Davies is just the beginning; other bits of Zander's reality also start to change. Is he going crazy? Is Tokyo Kim the cause or the cure? Is Mirror affecting the minds of its players? With his friends Waylin Strong and Tonya Book, Zander has to figure out what's going on, dodging tech giants and government intelligence agencies along the way. Entanglement is a story of friendship and coming of age, in which a group of gamer buddies explore the relationship between games and real life. Along the way they take a humorous and affectionate dive into gamer/geek culture, the history of video games and computers, and quantum physics.*Note on the the lack of chapter divisions is intentional and reflects the original artistic wishes of the author.
361 pages, Kindle Edition
Published April 19, 2020
About the author
Gibson Monk
8 books4 followersGibson Monk is a professor of humanities and author of speculative fiction that weaves myth, mystery, and modern life. His short stories have appeared in Sixfold, Zahir, Helios, and other literary magazines. He also writes non-fiction under the name Matthew Franks, with work published in The Graduate Journal of Harvard Divinity School and the anthology Past the Sky’s Rim: The Elder Scrolls and Theology. Monk lives in Virginia with his wife and three children. His debut novel, the sci-fi thriller Entanglement, follows a group of gamer kids who uncover a dangerous conspiracy involving big tech and shifting realities. His highly anticipated second novel, Las Animas High, releases May 5, 2026. Set in the stark Colorado desert, it follows teenager Danica Drake as she and her friends are thrust into a hidden war of dragons, giants, and ancient Indigenous forces after witnessing a deadly corporate hijacking. Blending supernatural suspense, mythology, and corporate intrigue, this coming-of-age story will appeal to fans of Percy Jackson, Stranger Things, and Skinwalker Ranch.
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
December 19, 2020
fun and thoughtful thriller
I devoured this book whole in a single weekend. You get a loveable cast of characters, an absorbing plotline, and plenty of deep-geek lore. The story begins in Anywhere, USA with a group of gamers who meet at a local store to share the debut of an augmented reality game. From there, the action takes off quickly as strange things start to happen and people begin to disappear. Our gamers must unravel the mystery to stop dark forces from altering the world as we know it.
I liked a lot about this book. Its plotline kept me turning pages. The characters were 3-dimensional: people you want to hang out with. Like your real friends, they will sometimes get on your nerves and sometimes surprise you, but they always have your back. I also enjoyed the narrative turns into esoteric elements of gaming history and culture in general. I would put it among the best books I've read this year. I would classify this along the lines of Ready Player One or Stranger Things, but probably even more real, like Phillip K. Dick. That's right, I said it.
I devoured this book whole in a single weekend. You get a loveable cast of characters, an absorbing plotline, and plenty of deep-geek lore. The story begins in Anywhere, USA with a group of gamers who meet at a local store to share the debut of an augmented reality game. From there, the action takes off quickly as strange things start to happen and people begin to disappear. Our gamers must unravel the mystery to stop dark forces from altering the world as we know it.
I liked a lot about this book. Its plotline kept me turning pages. The characters were 3-dimensional: people you want to hang out with. Like your real friends, they will sometimes get on your nerves and sometimes surprise you, but they always have your back. I also enjoyed the narrative turns into esoteric elements of gaming history and culture in general. I would put it among the best books I've read this year. I would classify this along the lines of Ready Player One or Stranger Things, but probably even more real, like Phillip K. Dick. That's right, I said it.
April 6, 2022
First of all, thank you to all those who have taken the time to read (and review, on this site and others) Entanglement - I’ve always believed that first and foremost a writer ought to treat the reader’s time as the most valuable thing when it comes to books, because it is.
Entanglement was published at perhaps the worst time possible - the middle of March 2020 (the Ides, in fact), and just a few days before the first lockdowns became official. So no author events at bookshops, no promotions to hand out, and everyone’s minds understandably preoccupied with getting a handle on the new reality, the new world, we found ourselves in. For a long while, I simply forgot about the book I had just written.
As we gradually find ourselves on the other side (with a few promotions and advertisements to help along the way), there have been more copies of Entanglement sold in the past two months than in the previous two years, and that’s deeply appreciated.
If it matters at all, here are a few thoughts that occur to me when I look back on how the book has aged, something that naturally comes up when thinking about novels, and particularly science fiction stories.
The theme of technology’s power to alter our reality certainly hasn’t lost relevance, and if anything has become more pronounced. The re-emergence of Russia as a major shaper of world events is an interesting coincidence, though it plays out very differently in the novel. But in the end, the science fiction elements of Entanglement were never meant to be the centerpiece of the book, but were there to highlight how people connect with each other in mysterious, wonderful ways, ways that technology can’t quite quantify or control. And that, I think, is a realization that is emerging with increasing force at this moment.
Which leads me to a special (and still perplexing) thank you, given to all the Canadian readers of the novel. Other than occasional trips to Toronto many years ago when I was in grad school at SUNY Buffalo, and the belief that Robertson Davies doesn’t get the recognition he deserves (at least not in the States), I have absolutely no particular connection to Canada. At the same time, of the readers of Entanglement, an absolutely inexplicably high proportion are in Canada. I’m not sure what to make of that, but thank you nonetheless.
One last minor point: what would I change about the book if I could? Well, the most consistent and understandable critique about my novel is its lack of chapter divisions. I won’t bother explaining all the reasons I omitted them, but it was not the original plan and it does bother me a bit. At first I wanted to divide the book into levels and stages, like certain video games (world 1-1, world 1-2…world 3-4, etc), and I wish I could go back and put those in. Highlighting the literary conceit of the novel being the stream of consciousness journal entry of a high school senior probably wasn’t worth the burden it put on the reader.
Entanglement was published at perhaps the worst time possible - the middle of March 2020 (the Ides, in fact), and just a few days before the first lockdowns became official. So no author events at bookshops, no promotions to hand out, and everyone’s minds understandably preoccupied with getting a handle on the new reality, the new world, we found ourselves in. For a long while, I simply forgot about the book I had just written.
As we gradually find ourselves on the other side (with a few promotions and advertisements to help along the way), there have been more copies of Entanglement sold in the past two months than in the previous two years, and that’s deeply appreciated.
If it matters at all, here are a few thoughts that occur to me when I look back on how the book has aged, something that naturally comes up when thinking about novels, and particularly science fiction stories.
The theme of technology’s power to alter our reality certainly hasn’t lost relevance, and if anything has become more pronounced. The re-emergence of Russia as a major shaper of world events is an interesting coincidence, though it plays out very differently in the novel. But in the end, the science fiction elements of Entanglement were never meant to be the centerpiece of the book, but were there to highlight how people connect with each other in mysterious, wonderful ways, ways that technology can’t quite quantify or control. And that, I think, is a realization that is emerging with increasing force at this moment.
Which leads me to a special (and still perplexing) thank you, given to all the Canadian readers of the novel. Other than occasional trips to Toronto many years ago when I was in grad school at SUNY Buffalo, and the belief that Robertson Davies doesn’t get the recognition he deserves (at least not in the States), I have absolutely no particular connection to Canada. At the same time, of the readers of Entanglement, an absolutely inexplicably high proportion are in Canada. I’m not sure what to make of that, but thank you nonetheless.
One last minor point: what would I change about the book if I could? Well, the most consistent and understandable critique about my novel is its lack of chapter divisions. I won’t bother explaining all the reasons I omitted them, but it was not the original plan and it does bother me a bit. At first I wanted to divide the book into levels and stages, like certain video games (world 1-1, world 1-2…world 3-4, etc), and I wish I could go back and put those in. Highlighting the literary conceit of the novel being the stream of consciousness journal entry of a high school senior probably wasn’t worth the burden it put on the reader.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews