The Six by Mark Alpert

Goodreads synopsis: To save humanity, they must give up their own.

Adam's muscular dystrophy has stolen his mobility, his friends, and in a few short years, it will take his life. Virtual reality games are Adam's only escape from his wheelchair. In his alternate world, he can defeat anyone. Running, jumping, scoring touchdowns: Adam is always the hero.

Then an artificial intelligence program, Sigma, hacks into Adam's game. Created by Adam's computer-genius father, Sigma has gone rogue, threatening Adam's life-and world domination. Their one chance to stop Sigma is using technology Adam's dad developed to digitally preserve the mind of his dying son.

Along with a select group of other terminally ill teens, Adam becomes one of the Six who have forfeited their bodies to inhabit weaponized robots. But with time running short, the Six must learn to manipulate their new mechanical forms and work together to train for epic combat...before Sigma destroys humanity.

My rating: 3 stars.

Content warnings: PG. Threats of violence against robots and a robot/dream kiss thing. (It's hard to explain.)

(spoilers below)

Thoughts: I'm just really relieved it wasn't terrible.

The story felt like it happened really fast, a little too fast for my preferences, and there wasn't a whole lot of time to really be able to get to know the characters or have much emotional depth from them. Even when characters died, it was a little hard to really feel anything for them, or the friends they left behind.

That being said, the story was pretty enjoyable. The plot was thought out, even if it did feel a little short, and the ideas were interesting. I did get lost somewhat in the technical jargon, but that's honestly to be expected with me. And it did bring up some interesting thoughts, mostly in Adam's mother's reaction to what was going on.

If the library has the next two books, it'd probably be something I'd pick up later, when I'm in the mood for something like this again. It was fun to read, and maybe that's all it needed to be.