Home Rating: - A compelling SciFi novel
Reviewed by Ian McCurley (age 13) for Reader Views (4/07)

"The Cassandra Virus" is set in the near future just when 64-bit processors are becoming outdated and technology is taking great leaps of bounds in the field of computer programming. Fourteen-year old Jordan and his sister, Cassie, live alone most of the time because their parents are archaeologists who are away for months at a time. Jordan and his best friend Helen call themselves "Igor" and "Igor." Helen loves amphibians, and her mother is a professor at Cassie's college. Cassie is preparing her thesis, which is a robot lie detector named Baby. Jordan and Cassandra, by the age of ten, had both mastered Latin and Calculus, and they were both experts in computer programming, but since Cassie was older, she had mastered everything first. Jordan wants to do something Cassie hasn't done yet, so he sets out to program a virus that is not a virus. The virus will be able to access all computers and then utilize the unused memory and processing power of the computers to create a supercomputer within computers. After he is finished, Jordan begins playing a computer strategy game. When he starts to "cheat," a message appears on the screen that says "You are not playing fairly, Jordan O'Blenis." Jordan discovers that the virus, named Cassandra, has become self-aware and has the ability to access private email. When Cassandra sees shady people ransacking Cassie's lab through the eyes of Baby, Jordan and Helen must get Cassie's stuff back and keep Cassandra out of the hands of the feds until she can be deleted.

"The Cassandra Virus" is a compelling story of the recurring theme of self-aware computers. K. V. Johansen writes excellently in the "The Cassandra Virus." This book is for humans age 12 and up who like reading science fiction and are interested in computer programming.