*** SUBTERRANEAN IS HAVING A DINGED BOOK SALE! I JUST GOT THIS FOR 15 BUCKS, WHICH MAKE THE FIRST SENTENCE OF THIS REVIEW EVEN TRUER, BUT MORE IMPORTANTLY - THERE ARE LOTS OF OTHER BOOKS FOR YOU POOR KIDS LIKE ME! https://subterraneanpress.com/dinged-...*** 
 man, i'm so glad i didn't have to spend 40 bucks on this. not because i would have regretted the purchase if i still had disposable income to toss madly at things i love, but because the relationship between "things i want" and "things i can afford to want" is uneven and the more money i can allocate for cat chemo and rent, the fewer my panic attacks will be. so, all gratitude to the services of netgalley for people who wish they were high rollers, but are not. 
 this is another win for mira grant. 
 i can see this sci-fi/horror novella being adapted into a better-than-average episode of black mirror. in fact, it reads like a mash-up of the black mirror episode "playtest," buffy, and the free tor short i just read by julianna baggott, The Virtual Swallows of Hog Island, which you can read here: http://www.tor.com/2017/01/25/the-vir.... 
 it's about the union of technology and therapy, where clients are shot through with pharmacological goodies and delivered into a virtual reality landscape designed by technicians with backgrounds in theater or haunted house design, intended to force patients to face their fears in a safe environment to overcome phobias, or to go through a fear-based experience with a rival or enemy in the expectation that a shared emotionally-charged scenario will diminish animosity and heal their relationship. however, every "safe environment" can be twisted into dangertown in the wrong hands. and mira grant loves to be the puppeteer manipulating those hands. 
 it's too short to reveal too much, but know that it has all the things that make mira grant so damn good: science bits that seem plausible, characters facing horrifying adversaries, blood blood carnage, lines like any word can be an insult if it's thrown hard enough from the window of a moving sneer, and an ending that is satisfying, unexpected, and a little more emotionally complicated than most. 
 financially untroubled folks can show your support and spend your $$$ here: 
 http://subterraneanpress.com/final-girls 
 the rest of you can get it from netgalley for free until may. 
 either way, you should get on it. 
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 THANK YOU NETGALLEY!! review to come! 
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 *oooh, the cover is up now!! and there's an EXCERPT at that link! go read it! 
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 i am too freaking poor right now to be spending 40 bucks on a novella, but maybe one of y'all can grab a copy and tell me all about it: 
 http://subterraneanpress.com/store/pr... 
 i will be waiting.