Feed the Machine – Erica Summers

4 stars

As a gamer/game enthusiast myself, a very large part of me was geeking out at the possibility of virtual reality one day going so far as to bleed into actual reality. The smaller part of me was positively horrified by the implications and the knowledge that I’d be a lump of eviscerated flesh the first time I ever tried a horror game.

I really sympathised a lot with Dash. The poor schmuck is just trying to make some money to win over his girl and had no idea he’d be playing his own Viscera Cleanup Detail. He’s also very much me if I ever found myself involved in a situation like that: green around the gills and constantly a sick mess.

Feed the Machine was so much more brutal than I was expecting, and I loved it! It satisfied the gamer in me, though I’d have loved to see more of the game itself to geek out over. Did anyone ever manage to make it past Toothy? Or finish the game? And what’s this mysterious X-rated game in development 👀👀

This story was great, and if all Erica’s books are as brilliantly thought out as this one, then I’ve really been missing out so far!