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Beat the game. Save the world. Pandora’s just your average teen, glued to her cell phone and laptop, surfing Facebook and e-mailing with her friends, until the day her long-lost father sends her a link to a mysterious site featuring twelve photos of her as a child. Unable to contain her curiosity, Pandora enters the site, where she is prompted to play her favorite virtual-reality game, Zero Day. This unleashes a global computer virus that plunges the whole world into panic: suddenly, there is no Internet. No cell phones. No utilities, traffic lights, hospitals, law enforcement. Pandora teams up with handsome stepbrothers Eli and Theo to enter the virtual world of Zero Day. Simultaneously, she continues to follow the photographs from her childhood in an attempt to beat the game and track down her father, her one key to saving the world as we know it. Part The Matrix, part retelling of the Pandora myth, Doomed has something for gaming fans, dystopian fans, and romance fans alike.
Doomed is a unique spin on the classic “doomsday” scenario. Basically Pandora Walker is contacted via email by her estranged father on her 17th birthday. Unable to resist this opportunity to connect with this man she barely knows but desperately want to know, she opens the email and sets into motion a destructive cyber worm which threatens to take down the world unless she–with the help of her friends,stepbrothers Eli and Theo–can take down the worm by beating the game it’s linked to. Epic gaming, commence.
Romance. It wasn’t really the main point of the book, but it was there and worth mentioning. Basically, when you have a girl and two guys trying to find a solution to the end of the world, there’s gonna be a little chemistry, right? Just go with it. ;o) Eli and Theo are very interesting, very opposite characters and throughout the novel, Pandora struggles to figure out her conflicting feelings about the two. While in the end, I was very happy with her choice, I wished that she hadn’t needed to make the choice at all. I think the story could have been just as intriguing and just as fulfilling with just one guy. The love triangle thing has really started to make me roll my eyes unless there is a super strong reason for it, and I just didn’t feel like there was a reason for it in this book.
Story. By and large the story was interesting and definitely different than I was expecting. When I read the synopsis I really thought it would be more about the game and a little bit more of a virtual reality scenario. This didn’t really detract from me enjoying the book, it was just not what I expected. While I’m not a gamer, my husband is, so I could appreciate that aspect and it definitely added an extra element which was interesting. It had some issues with pacing however. It seemed to move in circles and really dragged in a few places. There was also quite an environmentalist agenda that was sort of the undercurrent of the entire book, but it wasn’t super “in-your-face,” just sort of there throughout. Don’t get me wrong, I’m all about taking care of the earth and everything, it just seemed a little forced in this particular novel. Overall, I was intrigued and ended up enjoying it as a whole.
Overall. Other than my issues with the pacing, love triangle and environmentalist undercurrent, the story was intriguing and fun. Recommended for those who enjoy a gaming atmosphere and/or a doomsday, apocalypse scenario.
Author: Tracy Deebs
Title: Doomed
Published: Jan. 8th, 2013
Format: Hardcover, 480 pages
Website: www.tracydeebs.com
Source: review copy via NetGalley
My rating: 
Tracy Deebs collects books, English degrees and lipsticks and has been known to forget where—and sometimes who—she is when immersed in a great novel. At six she wrote her first short story—something with a rainbow and a prince—and at seven she forayed into the wonderful world of girls lit with her first Judy Blume novel. From the first page of that first book, she knew she’d found her life-long love. Now a writing instructor at her local community college, Tracy writes YA novels that run the gamut from dark mermaids and witches to kissing clubs and techno-Armageddon stories… and she still has a soft spot for Judy Blume.
Find our more about Tracy and her books in the following places.
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Sounds like a super-intriguing premise! Does everyone know that Pandora (excellent name, ha ha) is the one who inadvertently released the cyber worm? Talk about major embarrassment! Too bad the love triangle angle wasn’t awesome.
Some very important people know it’s her…making her a bit of a fugitive. ;o) As far as the love triangle, sometimes it’s necessary for a plot arc or whatever, but other times it just feels like a simple fix for showing growing sexual tension and therefore really not necessary. Call me crazy but I would’ve rather been shown some depth in her relationship with her best friend than the back and forth with the two guys. It was distracting to me.
Great review, Heather. I especially like your comment on love triangles being overdone.
Thanks, Jenny!
Ah …the good old Love Triangle… How I hate them (most of the times..). Anyway, it does sound great but I’m still not 100% sold ..
Yes, Danny, I totally agree. If there is going to be a love triangle, you have to prove it’s necessary to your story. The story had enormous potential, just didn’t deliver in all respects.