Try James Dashner's new trilogy: The Mortality Doctrine.
The Eye of Minds starts off the series.
Here's what Amazon has to say about the title:
The Eye of Minds is the first novel in the Mortality Doctrine
series set in a world of hyperadvanced technology, cyberterrorists, and
gaming beyond your wildest dreams . . . and your worst nightmares.
Michael is a gamer. And like most gamers, he almost spends more time on
the VirtNet than in the actual world. The VirtNet offers total mind and
body immersion, and it’s addictive. Thanks to technology, anyone with
enough money can experience fantasy worlds, risk their life without the
chance of death, or just hang around with Virt-friends. And the more
hacking skills you have, the more fun. Why bother following the rules
when most of them are dumb, anyway?
But some rules were made for a
reason. Some technology is too dangerous to fool with. And recent
reports claim that one gamer is going beyond what any gamer has done
before: he’s holding players hostage inside the VirtNet. The effects are
horrific—the hostages have all been declared brain-dead. Yet the
gamer’s motives are a mystery.
The government knows that to catch
a hacker, you need a hacker. And they’ve been watching Michael. They
want him on their team. But the risk is enormous. If he accepts their
challenge, Michael will need to go off the VirtNet grid. There are back
alleys and corners in the system human eyes have never seen and
predators he can’t even fathom—and there’s the possibility that the line
between game and reality will be blurred forever. (
Amazon.com)
One of our students enjoyed the book so much that the first thing he told me when we came back to school was that the second book in the series,
The Rule of Thoughts, was recently released. MMHS just purchased- so feel free to jump into the series :-)