The Kognition Cycle First Fragment + Second Stage

Book Review

Title: The Kognition Cycle First Fragment + Second Stage

Author: Brandon R. Chinn

Rating: ★★★.5

Date Published: June 12, 2015

Publisher: Self-Published

Genre: Fantasy

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Buy Me: Amazon

Add me on Goodreads: The Kognition Cycle

Synopsis:

Lisa Perdita is a Future Child, one of many who live in an age of endless digital-world connection. Secretly she is also Njorun, an infamous player-persona in the world’s most popular video game: Kognition. Between juggling schoolwork and her personal life, she has spent much of the last ten years in Kognition’s world of Midgard. First Fragment explores the beginning of the Cycle, an opening act pushed forward by death. Second Stage continues the Kognition epic by taking Lisa Perdita beyond the game itself. 

This edition collects First Fragment and Second Stage together for the first time with new and updated content from the author, two short stories that further establish the characters of Lisa Perdita and Hayden Itagaki.

My Thoughts:

The Author was kind enough to send me a copy of his book in exchange for an honest review.

I have never read a book like this, it was so different from all my previous reads the main reason being because it's about a game. I really enjoyed this book, but I did have some minor problems with it. Kogniton is a game people play all over the world, as more people play it the game expands and more realms are built, in the first fragment of the book we meet Lisa a girl who has been playing Kognition since she was very young. Lisa is one of the best players around. One day after she logs in she sees a girl is dying in the middle of the field and decides to heal her and give her a weapon since she believes she is lower rank player, but there something strange about the girl that Lisa can quite put her finger on; Lisa soon becomes obsessed with finding out who or what she is. For The First fragment of the book I felt a little overwhelmed with the Game talk and some of it became a little repetitive at points. The Second Stage is where Brandon really caught my attention and I was glad I kept reading! Lisa has seen and heard some things she shouldn't have and people are after her; she has run away from home and keeps on switching from Lisa to her player persona Njorun. In the Second Stage we also meet Sam a young boy that has been living in a farm with his mom since he was a little boy and has never seen anything outside it. I really enjoyed the character development that Njorun/Lisa goes through, I also really liked that she was very independent character and didn't need any help to kick butt. I really liked the action in this book and all the new characters we are introduced to, especially Sam he really won me over. As I was reading I also noticed that Brandon's writing is very poetic some scenes and world descriptions are written very beautifully. Towards the end I was hit with some very unexpected twists that have me craving the third book. Another thing I noticed is that this book has zero romance which is very rare in a YA book and also very refreshing.

Overall I really enjoyed this book the beginning is a little slow, but I promise it gets better as the book progresses. I recommend this book to anyone that is looking for something different and likes a strong female lead character that kicks ass. 

-SandraTheBookWorm