Submitted by Teresa Kennedy 
(Oct 11, 2010)White-haired Socket Pablo Greeny is a young adult hero like no other. Largely left to his own devices by an overworked Mom with a mysterious job, a troubled Socket spends a lot of time acting out at school and acting in elaborate games of virtual role play.
Until that is, one game is interrupted and he is told by a sim that it's time to discover his "true nature," causing a power surge that results in a worldwide shut down of virtual mode.
The incident is enough to summon his mother, who transports him via wormhole to the Garrison,headquarters of the Paladin Nation. Older than history, the highly evolved members of the Nation protect humanity from extinction.
And it is there that Socket Greeny's discoveries begin.
Featuring a plot filled with delightful suprises--telepathy, timeslicing and the strong possibility that Socket just might have to save the world, Bertauski's vision of the near future is both achingly familiar and wonderfully complex. The teen inhabitants of Charleston South Carolina live on pizza, get frenzied over a game called Tagghet; and have cell phones implanted in their cheeks. High school life is populated with gangs of uber punks, Bleeders and VirtualModers--yet is still a place where childhood friends fumble toward romance and misfits yearn to belong.
Utterly authentic, completely original, and deeply moving, The Discovery of Socket Greeny is sure to garner a host of fans, and leaves the reader seeing their own world from a whole new perspective. BRAVO!
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