For her birthday, Giannine Bellisario (Janine) receives a gift certificate to the popular Rasmussen Gaming Center, a virtual reality arcade offering the very best in role-playing simulations. After some thought, she chooses Heir Apparent, a complicated game in which the customer must fulfill a number of requirements, and pass a variety of tests in order to assume the throne of a mythical kingdom. But be careful, for one wrong step and it’s back to the beginning for you. What no one could predict, though, is that while immersed in her game, Janine would become trapped there, courtesy of an overzealous child protection society and a damaged simulator. Now, if she can’t complete the scenario on her own, within a certain real-world timeframe, she’ll be a brain-fried vegetable. Talk about getting your money’s worth!

So all she has to do now is find a magic ring, battle a barbarian horde, outwit a dragon, survive some homicidal royal siblings and a backstabbing queen, fend off some ghosts, win over the army to her side, and make it to the throne before she gets killed one too many times. Valiantly, she tries. Again, and again, and again, and again. Each time she gets a little further, but each time she uses up some more of her precious time. Will she figure things out before time runs out?

Combining science fiction technology and a fantasy setting, Heir Apparent is a brilliant blend of the two, an exciting and entertaining twist on a very old story. We’ve all read the one about the person of low birth who’s really royalty and who has to undergo certain tasks before they can take the throne they’ve always been destined for; Heir Apparent deconstructs the story by dropping in someone truly unfit for the destiny, and then giving her numerous “do-overs.” Imagine if your favorite fantasy novel came equipped with restarts. Naturally, Janine is tenacious, creative, and unorthodox, further twisting the familiar story into knots. This is another great offering from versatile author Vivian Vande Velde, and it’s a great deal of fun.