Deb Bollinger has no time for corporate training.Her company’s top engineer at just twenty-seven, Deb has blocked off her day for the one project she truly cares about: the launch of Carebnb, an app that finds spare beds for the homeless. When she’s told all employees must drop everything for some busywork exercise called Blackquest 40, it’s an easy no.Trouble is, her bosses aren’t really asking. … asking. Blackquest 40 is the mother of all corporate trainings. A near-impossible project to be completed in forty straight hours. No phones. No internet. Sleeping on cots. Nobody in, nobody out.Deb finds the whole setup creepy and authoritarian. When a Carebnb issue necessitates her leaving the office, she heads for the door.What”s the worst that could happen?Armed commandos, HVAC-duct chases, a catastrophic master plan that gets darker by the hour – Blackquest 40 is a fresh take on the Die Hard formula, layering smart-drones and a modern heroine onto the classic action tale.
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Blackquest 40 is a clever, entertaining and suspenseful, tech lovers dream. I enjoyed it immensely and had trouble putting it down.
The plot is action-filled, and the pace had me flipping the pages. This is my first read by Jeff Bond, and it won’t be my last. I really love his writing style. It’s readable and immersive.
The only downside of this book is the reference to coding and other technology. It’s a bit difficult to understand in the beginning, but I got it eventually. It just took some powering through and after I understood everything, the book was really fun.
The characters are well developed. Deb was a fantastic main character and added to the imersiveness of Blackquest 40!
I highly recommend Blackquest 40!
*I received a copy of this book as part of a blog tour with Partners in Crime Tours. All opinions are my own.*
Enjoyed a tech perspective suspense
wow truly scary
Could someone manipulate things like this? Scary to think…
Really enjoyed it.
Didn’t like this book. Too much profanity. Quit reading it almost at the beginning.
Not impressed with the characters.
Really enjoyed this book. A lot of computer terminology above my head, but it didn’t matter. The story was still easy to follow and a very likable heroine.
Should have a good understanding of tech jargon
Good read
2 days! It had me riveted; I have a farm! I don’t have time to be riveted! I’m not going to say anything more but it’s a must read.
Fast paced and exciting. I didn’t understand a lot of the programming jargon, but that didn’t interfere with my enjoyment at all. The jargon was a necessary part of the plot, which was very clever and original. Loved it.
Meant for the more computer savvy than I, but it was still fun and kept you reading about how she was going to get out of this mess..
Deb is a kick-ass hero. The book is technical enough for nerds but just as good for near computer illiterates. Original plot, with a number of surprises. Strongly recommended!
Sorry but just couldn’t get started on it.
This book is out of this world
A corporate training exercise for an IT group runs off the rails, and one programmer uncovers some very troubling aspects of the training. A fun read for anyone who has ever had to participate in a corporate training exercise – and hated it!
This put a whole new spin on In-house training and team building. Deb Bollinger is a bit of a free spirit and has her own agenda to complete and that doesn’t include been part of a forced training session no matter what they tell her. Been her company’s top engineer it becomes critical that she becomes involved and the people running Blackquest 40 are going the have it their way no matter what. When Deb’s boss who she admires returns from her trip in the middle of this crisis is she acting for the benefit of Deb or the people running the training program. Lots of questions and you will have to read the whole book to get the answers.
I received this book for free. I am voluntarily posting this review and all opinions expressed herein are my own.
A clever, entertaining and suspenseful story. I was pulled in from the very beginning and was so interested in the plot that I ended up listening to this book in one day. I loved the main character, Deb, who is feisty and opinionated. She is an asset to her company and she takes advantage of that status. Her moniker of a fellow employee who frequents McDonalds as “Sausage McGriddle Man” made me chuckle and quickly conveys Deb’s character. I completely bought into her character and while there were a couple of times I thought the story stretched the believeability factor – but, the story quickly got back on track and I was willing to overlook those moments. I loved that throughout the story as new characters were introduced, you were never sure whether or not they could be trusted – which keeps you guessing until the end.
The narrator, Natalie Duke, had the perfect tone for Deb [as the story is from her POV] – at times snarky, brash, likeable and smart.
I was intrigued by the cover and concept for this one – both caught my attention straight away and promised a dark tale of corporate greed. The book went a little farther than I thought it would, and while I must admit that I rolled my eyes once or twice and had to suspend disbelief more than a few times, the tale on the whole was an entertaining and enjoyable ride.
What starts as a corporate training exercise quickly devolves into a radically insane race against time – but to do what, really, and for whom? Resolving those questions becomes an obsessive mission for Deb Bollinger, a software prodigy with some personality quirks that waver between believable and not-so-much so… Her character, thrust into an unbelievable situation, proceeds to shift between bad-ass and hesitant a couple of times in ways that didn’t feel quite believable; fortunately those shifts were short-lived and the tough-as-nails personality carried most of the story. Without that personality things would have been a lot less interesting and even more unbelievable. Her travails were darkly humorous, starkly dangerous, and quirkily entertaining throughout, and even though she was a difficult character for me to relate to, she made the story for me. I loved her perspective (for the most part, except for the odd couple of meltdowns mentioned already) and I think her outrageousness held the tale together.
It was a quick read, well paced and characterized. The plot occasionally felt a little overly dramatic, but it worked with the writing style and personalities involved. I enjoyed this one, and would read the author again.
I received an advance review copy for free through BookSirens, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.
An Interesting Technothriller
Blackquest 40 has that perfect technothriller vibe that I love. It takes things that you’re used to in your world today and turns them against you. In the case with this book – it was a company (similar to Google) is taking part in a training exercise – but it’s not your ordinary team building experience.
Bond did a really nice job creating a character that was likable and, from the start, we understood that she was a bit of a rebel. This comes into play nicely later in the story – but it was set up without feeling too “set-up-like” if that makes any sense.
Right away Bond dives into the story – within a few chapters we’ve already met most of the main players in the story – and we’re thrown into the thrilling parts of the story within a few minutes. I wasn’t sure just how far the story or the characters would go but I knew I wanted to find out what happened.
Overall, I thought that Blackquest 40 was a unique and interesting take in a genre that I love. Bond was able to create a memorable experience without it feeling overdone or done before.
One of the complaints that I had while reading was that he continued to use the word “repository”. I work as a product manager for a tech company – I understand code to some extent and what a repository is. What I don’t ever hear is the full word repository. Everyone I’ve ever worked with has called it a “repo”. I think that Bond could have used the full word once and then switched over. I guess technically someone could argue that the group of “trainers” might not know that, but from other scenes (trying not to spoil anything) they’ve worked with tech companies before. It’s small and probably wouldn’t bother the average person – but it was in the book enough times that it got to me personally.