The Annunciate by Severna Park

The Annunciate by Severna Park

Avon Books, 1999. 

Overview: In The Annunciate, the reader is thrown into the worlds, plural, of ThreeSys, a system of three suns and their planets. "Propagats," which are some sort of bioform, are the basis for a class system. The Meshed, of which our protagonist, Eve, is a member, have a one-time injection so they can access all the knowledge about their physical environment AND create a personalized virtual environment in which to spend time and use for self defense. The Jacked are able to access the Mesh with the help of a port in their wrist, and the unlucky Jackless can't access it at all. While the Meshed were nearly wiped out for being elitist douchecanoes, the few remaining survivors addicted a gigantic percentage of the Jacked and Jackless to Staze, a drug that sends people to a pretty and calm virtual environment for  12 hours a day, and conveniently makes them dependent on the few Meshed they didn't massacre. Add to that a bit of mythology that is basically Genesis with spaceships and no God, and you've got the beginnings of an interstellar trip.

My reaction: First thing I did when I finished the book was drop it (lightly!) to the ground and say, "That was weird!" While it was largely an enjoyable read, I grew frustrated with the fact that my disbelief had not been completely suspended. I couldn't figure out why just anyone couldn't find a syringe and shoot themselves up with propagats, and while it was eventually hinted that that wouldn't work, I didn't see why it wouldn't. Maybe I missed something. Anyway, I also couldn't get super invested in the liaison between Eve and the Jacked, Staze-addicted Naverdi. That was particularly disappointing, since Eve is recalling sex they had in the first line of the book.  Sadly, that was not foreshadowing for lots of sex, or even a real romantic relationship--any chance of that was poisoned by Naverdi's addiction. There is some pretty interesting virtual world collision that goes on, and I also enjoyed how the mythology played out in the struggle for survival on "Paradise," a planet that was the analogue of the Garden of Eden in Park's version, but I couldn't quite give it a "decent"  since I couldn't stop questioning some of the fundamentals of the story. (Come on, Eve, you're 21--maybe be a little more repentant that you're partially responsible for addicting all those people to a really bad drug?)