The Memory of Sydney - Chronicles of a Stolen World, #7

A group of jumbo jets lands on the destroyed runways of the now non-existent Sydney airport. Hundreds of grieving Sydney virtuals disembark, having come in the very bodies they were using in battle, to conduct the last rites for their human families. The leaders of Screenside are left rueing the decision to try to kill the digital beasts by getting into their computer network, instead of accepting collateral human damage and going with the option of direct military assault on the physical assets of the parallel world.
Filled with remorse and guilt, they have sent the mission to Sydney, hoping to at least give the bereaved Sydney virtuals an opportunity to mourn their dead and find closure. It would never be easy to cope with the fallout of a genocidal event for which they blame themselves, but it gets a lot harder when they discover a child! Editorial ReviewsWILL SIMPLY DELIGHT SCI-FI READERS - Midwest Book ReviewThe story is both challenging and compelling, and will simply delight sci-fi readers who enjoy AI accounts, struggles between humans and entities who share both their humanity and alien abilities, and explorations of what it truly means to grieve, move on, grow, and be human.
This 7th book in the series requires no prior reading of the others in order to prove captivating to newcomers (particularly given the book-by-book recaps provided in the beginning, which set the stage for and explain the premise of this stolen world). MIND BLOWING - Readers' FavoriteThe Memory of Sydney blew me away like the nuclear bomb on Sydney. As a big fan of The Matrix, I thought the setting of an underlying, 'living' virtual world was executed astonishingly well.
The thought processes, the psychology, were mind-blowing. I especially praise J. A. Hailey's masterful, organized writing that never left me confused throughout multiple body-sharing virtuals. The Memory of Sydney's quality and depth of world-building make me regret not following the books that came before.