The Extremes - Christopher Priest
I recently read The Prestige and enjoyed it very much, so I thought I would try another Christopher Priest novel. Priest followed up The Prestige with The Extremes. The book is about an FBI agent, Teresa Simons, whose husband is murdered in a shooting spree in a small town in Texas at the same time a shooting spree occurred in another small town in England named Bulverton. While mourning the loss of her husband, she visits Bulverton. During her stay, she visits ExEx, a virtual reality machine that allows individuals to be fully absorbed in a reconstructed experience. Before ExEx became commercially accessible to the masses, Teresa had trained on the virtual reality machines in reconstructions of criminal events. While using the commercial ExEx in Bulverton, Teresa begins to test the extreme boundaries of the simulations. She also begins to experiment with cross-linking scenarios. This leads to her connecting her husband's murder with the tragedy in Bulverton. This takes on a newfound intensity when she begins to experience virtual scenarios within virtual scenarios. Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed this book. The ending was vague to me, but perhaps it is meant to be. Is the whole book a virtual reality experience? Is there a connection between her childhood experience of a mirror within a mirror to the virtual experience of a scenario within a scenario? Although I wished for a better ending, the ride was well worth it.