Summer 2004 Review:

 Have you ever been caught in a virtual game? With only a limited time to save your own life? Heir Apparent is about a 14 year old girl named Giannine, who goes to a virtual video game arcade named Rasmussem Enterprises. She is hooked up to a machine. The game starts with her on a hillside overlooking St. Jehan. She finds out that the king of the land has died, and that she is one of his children.  
She has been picked to be the new king! She arrives at the castle and goes to meet her father's widow and their three children: Abs, Kenric, and Wulfgar. 
Throughout the book, she must get a magic ring, fight a dragon, find the stolen treasure, and answer a dwarf's riddles. She also needed to make a good poem for a head-chopping statue, charm an army of ghosts, and fight off a camp of barbarian men. She only has a limited time to do this, because a band of parents destroyed the machine she is plugged into! If she does not win the game in three days (game time), she will lose her life, in the game and in real life. 
Heir Apparent was an okay book. It had a good theme. The author needed to untangle the many plot lines so that the reader could better understand the story line. For example: "Well, I thought as I pulled myself out from under Dusty on the hill over looking St.Jehan How many more stupid mistakes can I make before I run out of time? I guess that explained what killed me in the topiary maze. People had said that the queen was there with Wulfgar, but when I saw Kenric, I assumed they had gotten the wrong son. Right son, just not human at the moment, thank you very much."
This part takes place after she had gone to the topiary maze and found Kenric with the queen, and not Wulfgar who kills her when she is trying to find her way out of the maze. The author should have elaborated more before this death (one of many). I would not recommend this book to others, because the book did not capture my interest.

~Rochelle Beiersdorfer, 6th grade, home-schooled