Prometheus Road

Bruce Balfour, national bestselling author of The Forge of Mars and The Digital Dead, transports readers to a future Earth--and a virtual reality hell...

Tom has always lived in the shadow of Nova Olympus--a mountain that marks were the gods cast the heathen city of San Francisco into the sea centuries ago. He cannot resist the allure of the forbidden zones near the sunken city, and the rare relics of the people who lived there.

Tom's defiance brings down the wrath of the gods and sends him running for his life, his only friend a mysterious hermit who promises him a safe haven. However, there is no safe haven and Tom discovers that the gods are a lie--they are artificial intelligences created by a humanity they now control. Only Tom can follow the Prometheus Road, a terrifying, mystical pathway that will lead him from a face-off with enemies that are half-human, half-machine to a virtual reality battleground where war-faring computer programs demand Tom's destruction.

From BOOKLIST:
In a future northern California farm community strictly governed by a council of unseen artificial intelligences known as the Dominion, Tom Eliot is a dangerous anomaly, an adventuresome 20-year-old who scavenges among the forbidden zones near the submerged ruins of San Francisco. During one nocturnal foray, Tom attracts the unwelcome attention of the community's overseers and unwittingly summons a nanobomb that destroys his family. On the run from Dominion cyborgs, Tom is taken under the wing of eccentric hermit Magnus, who enlightens him on the violent history of the Dominion and mentors him in navigating a frightening, Dominion-based virtual world called the Stronghold. With his talent for subterfuge, Tom may be humanity's last hope to walk a virtual "Prometheus Road" and gain backdoor entry into the Stronghold and the power to cast off Dominion oppression. Balfour's quirky characters and suspenseful narration raise the familiar sf theme of humanity enslaved by wayward computer technology above the level of the routine, making for must reading for virtual-reality fans. --Carl Hays
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