The Faces of Fear

by Monica Hughes

Joanna is everything Joan wants to be. She's a sleek warrior with cascading raven hair, a girl who is smart and brave. The catch? Joanna exists only in the Virtual Reality program of Joan's computer. Devastated by her recent accident, and confined to a wheelchair, Joan is searching for a new reality. She thinks she's found one in an exciting experimental computer game she plays with her new friend "Whizkid." But Joan and Whizkid are discovering that their game is becoming too a little too real - and dangerous. There's only one way out: Joan and Steve must confront the faces of their own fears ...

Genres: Science Fiction, Young Adult

197 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published September 1, 1998

About the author

Monica Hughes was a very popular writer for young people, and has won numerous prizes. Her books have been published in the United States, Poland, Spain, Japan, France, Scandinavia, England, and Germany. She has twice received the Canada Council Prize for Children's Literature, and was runner-up for the Guardian Award.

She is the author of Keeper of the Isis Light, an American Library Association Best Book for Young Adults, which also received a Certificate of Honor from the International Board on Books for Young People; Hunter in the Dark, also an ALA Best Book for Young Adults; and Sandwriter, among many other titles.

Reviews

[Ian Swartz · Rating 5 out of 5]

Childhood favorite :)

[Cupof Tea · Rating 4 out of 5]

A weird mix of topics I like in YA: a disabled protagonist and her baseball-playing internet friend collaborate to solve puzzles and overcome their fears, more intense than expected due to an unknown antagonist. Weird use of VR from a book written in 1998 - this book is not hard SF, so no explanation as to how this level of VR exists 20 years ago - but this is something that this author has used before, and one reason I love to read her books. The ending was kind of strange, as they sometimes are with juvenile fiction, tying up loose ends in ways that may have been out of character, but still an enjoyable story.