Rating: 
Summary: Cyberpunk with a Twist
Review: Dennis Danver�s Circuit of Heaven is cyberpunk with the added bonus of a classic, troubled love story. In the novel, Danver takes you into the lives of two young people who live in completely different worlds. Most of human society has chosen to give up their physical being to live eternally in the �bin�, a virtual reality world where life goes on forever, there is no death disease or crime.
Nemo is a twenty-one year-old boy whose parents chose to follow the mainstream and live in the bin. Nemo, however, disputes life in the bin, and he only travels to the virtual reality twice a year to visit his parents. On one such trip, Nemo meets Justine, a young woman who lives in the bin. Nemo and Justine fall deeply in love; but they both live in separate worlds. Will Nemo chose love and give in to his strong beliefs against the bin, or will he risk losing the love of his life to remain a mortal?
In Circuit of Heaven, Danver�s creates a perfect love story, while adding the elements of a Cyberpunk novel; there is the presence of artificial intelligence, life in a utopian virtual reality, and a desolate and indefinite view of the future of life on earth and the affect that technology will have on it. This is the perfect novel for the Cyberpunk fan with a romantic side.
Rating: 
Summary: Romeo and Juliet meet the 21st Century
Review: Dennis Danvers does a great job of blending the classic tale of "star-crossed lovers," Romeo and Juliet, and the science fiction of the 21st century. Danvers takes the two lovers who would do anything to be together and places them in two different worlds. One lives in a world full of religious fanatics and the criminally insane, while the other lives in a world of immortality on a computer. Danvers combines this love story with the growing technology and virtuality of the world to create a well-written novel. People praise Newman Rogers as the creator of a virtual paradise. The Bin is exactly like the real world except it does not have the pain, crime, or most importantly, death, which people experience in reality. Nemo made the choice to stay out of the Bin when he was ten years old, right after his parents left him to join up with the twelve billion people already there. They left him in the care of a seven-foot tall lizard "construct" named Lawrence. The only time he makes the journey to this virtual reality is on his birthday and Christmas. Twice a year he gives up his convictions against this place to visit his parents. On his twenty-first birthday, Nemo¡¯s parents fix him his usual dinner. His uncle has a very intriguing woman with him this year. It is love at first site. Nemo and Justine are inseparable until Nemo has no choice but to leave the Bin. For the next three days, the two lovers spend a lot of time together. Nemo shows her his world, but as Justine tries to remember, her past is very sketchy. She hardly remembers anything about the past few weeks, just the nightmares. Nemo has to struggle with his newfound love. Should he give up his beliefs and commit himself to a life of immortality or shut her out of his life and live in the real world without her as he had always planned? Danvers does a great job of keeping the reader in suspense until the very end.
Rating:
Summary: Romeo and Juliet meet the 21st Century
Review: Dennis Danvers does a great job of blending the classic tale of "star-crossed lovers," Romeo and Juliet, and the science fiction of the 21st century. Danvers takes the two lovers who would do anything to be together and places them in two different worlds. One lives in a world full of religious fanatics and the criminally insane, while the other lives in a world of immortality on a computer. Danvers combines this love story with the growing technology and virtuality of the world to create a well-written novel. People praise Newman Rogers as the creator of a virtual paradise. The Bin is exactly like the real world except it does not have the pain, crime, or most importantly, death, which people experience in reality. Nemo made the choice to stay out of the Bin when he was ten years old, right after his parents left him to join up with the twelve billion people already there. They left him in the care of a seven-foot tall lizard "construct" named Lawrence. The only time he makes the journey to this virtual reality is on his birthday and Christmas. Twice a year he gives up his convictions against this place to visit his parents. On his twenty-first birthday, Nemo¡¯s parents fix him his usual dinner. His uncle has a very intriguing woman with him this year. It is love at first site. Nemo and Justine are inseparable until Nemo has no choice but to leave the Bin. For the next three days, the two lovers spend a lot of time together. Nemo shows her his world, but as Justine tries to remember, her past is very sketchy. She hardly remembers anything about the past few weeks, just the nightmares. Nemo has to struggle with his newfound love. Should he give up his beliefs and commit himself to a life of immortality or shut her out of his life and live in the real world without her as he had always planned? Danvers does a great job of keeping the reader in suspense until the very end.
Rating:
Summary: If You Could Live Forever...
Review: Dennis Danvers is absolutely brilliant at taking some impossible premise and making it believable. This is the third novel of his that I've read and probably the best. In this one, a brave new world has been created, in which you can "upload" yourself into some kind of really far-out computer, and live forever in cyber-immortality. Most of humanity has already done so and is now living happily in "the Bin," while a few holdouts still populate an increasingly empty earth. This is the background for the love story of Nemo and Justine--one living in "the real world" and the other in "the Bin." But, it's far more complicated than that. Who are these people, really? What does it mean to be a human being? What is the nature of personal identity? And, is immortality always worth the cost? These questions are explored not in theory, but in the story, and the story is beautiful. What would you do? Give up eternal life for the person you love? Or give up real life for computerized immortality? And how would you decide? Profound and thoughtful story with an unobtrusive spiritual dimension. I recommend it highly.
Rating:
Summary: Deceptively Good Read
Review: For the first half of this novel, I thought that it was a decent, if somewhat slow read. As I got into the meat of the plot, however, I found myself staying up later to read it, putting off chores and errands, and really looking forward to the next twist or turn of the plot. Danvers doesn't go as deep into the theological debates as I might have liked, but the story is excellent, and the closet romantic in me couldn't help but be drawn to the two main characters and their plight. A good read, overall.
Rating:
Summary: Circuit of Heaven
Review: I am an avid reader, but usually not of science fiction. Dennis Danvers has fully caught my attention. The story line of this book was one that I lost myself in from beginning to end and I am looking forward to reading End of Days and anything else the author has written.
Rating:
Summary: A good, thoughtful, exciting read
Review: I seem to gravitate to post-apocolyptic tales, whether they be happy or troubled scenarios, and thoroughly enjoyed this complex and gripping adventure. While the concept of converting living human personalities into virtual ones has been done before, most excellently by Frederick Pohl in his "Gateway" series for example, I relished Danvers' believable portrayals of persons good and evil, "real" and virtual, human and construct. There were sufficient twists and surprises to keep my up beyond my usual bed times, and I was genuinely touched by the ending. It's a keeper.
Rating: 
Summary: Unforgivable?
Review: I've always been intrigued by the idea of immortality. Who wants to grow old and die? Therefore I was impressed by the fact that, in Circuit of Heaven, Mr. Danvers succeeds in portraying a vision of immortality that is downright repulsive. In this future world, humanity has largely downloaded itself to a virtual reality, a Matrix-like cybernetic environment called "the Bin," where everyone can live forever. The protagonist, Nemo, is a young man who rejects society's move to the Bin, and prefers to stay behind in the real world, now inhabited mostly by fundamentalist Christians. I was emotionally convinced by Nemo's principaled refusal of the Bin. Through his eyes, we see the Bin as a realm of claustrophobic denial and stultifying artifice. The Bin is a symbol of a society that is decadent, corrupt and complacent; Nemo is the idealistic rebel who refuses to go along with the herd. The Bin is hell, but Nemo is on the side of the angels. The novel is fast-paced, fun and easy to read, and seems to have a classic story hook: Nemo falls in love with a woman who exists only in the Bin. There are several overt references to Romeo and Juliet, and so I steeled myself for a tragic conclusion. SPOILER ALERT: I can't voice the main objection of my review without giving away the ending, so please don't read on if that sort of thing bothers you. The author seems to have chickened out, or perhaps been bulliied by his publisher. The tragic ending which seems so clearly intimated earlier in the book never materializes. That's fine; I like happy endings. But this conclusion is only superficially happy. Nemo abandons all his objections and downloads himself into the Bin to be with the woman he loves! If you were convinced, as was I, by Nemo's initial rejection of the Bin, then you can't accept this reversal. It seems that Nemo simply "sells out," which is perhaps tragedy in itself, but the author doesn't seem to realize it. I believe this author has committed an unforgivable sin: the betrayal of both the reader's trust and the integrity of his own story.
Rating:
Summary: Unforgivable?
Review: I've always been intrigued by the idea of immortality. Who wants to grow old and die? Therefore I was impressed by the fact that, in Circuit of Heaven, Mr. Danvers succeeds in portraying a vision of immortality that is downright repulsive. In this future world, humanity has largely downloaded itself to a virtual reality, a Matrix-like cybernetic environment called "the Bin," where everyone can live forever. The protagonist, Nemo, is a young man who rejects society's move to the Bin, and prefers to stay behind in the real world, now inhabited mostly by fundamentalist Christians. I was emotionally convinced by Nemo's principaled refusal of the Bin. Through his eyes, we see the Bin as a realm of claustrophobic denial and stultifying artifice. The Bin is a symbol of a society that is decadent, corrupt and complacent; Nemo is the idealistic rebel who refuses to go along with the herd. The Bin is hell, but Nemo is on the side of the angels. The novel is fast-paced, fun and easy to read, and seems to have a classic story hook: Nemo falls in love with a woman who exists only in the Bin. There are several overt references to Romeo and Juliet, and so I steeled myself for a tragic conclusion. SPOILER ALERT: I can't voice the main objection of my review without giving away the ending, so please don't read on if that sort of thing bothers you. The author seems to have chickened out, or perhaps been bulliied by his publisher. The tragic ending which seems so clearly intimated earlier in the book never materializes. That's fine; I like happy endings. But this conclusion is only superficially happy. Nemo abandons all his objections and downloads himself into the Bin to be with the woman he loves! If you were convinced, as was I, by Nemo's initial rejection of the Bin, then you can't accept this reversal. It seems that Nemo simply "sells out," which is perhaps tragedy in itself, but the author doesn't seem to realize it. I believe this author has committed an unforgivable sin: the betrayal of both the reader's trust and the integrity of his own story.
Rating:
Summary: Fascinating
Review: In 2081, most of the human population has had their consciousness "uploaded" into a giant computer called the Bin. The Bin is a virtual, electronic world that approximates our own. Except there is no crime, disease or death. However, most people inside the Bin are unhappy and stagnating. Outside the Bin, there are only about 2.5 million people. The Earth's population consists of survivalists, the criminally insane, religious fanatics, and Christian fundamentalists. As you can imagine, the world is a pretty interesting place to live in. Nemo, our 21-year old protagonist, lives in this world. After his parents abandon him to upload themselves into the Bin, he lives in his old neigborhood, fixing CD players and VCRs for barter. He lives with his protector, a Construct named Lawrence (a seven foot lizard with 4 souls), and his best friend Johnathan (a Christian fundamentalist). Nemo doesn't want to enter the Bin because his grandmother, to whom he was very close, chose to die outside the Bin. One day, while Nemo is visiting inside the Bin with his parents, he meets Justine. Justine is Nemo's dream woman, and she seems to have no memory of her life outside the Bin. The mystery and relationship between Justine and Nemo grows as they discover the secrets of those in the Bin, and those outside of it. I really enjoyed this novel and I would highly recommend it to SF fans. My only complaint is that it wasn't long enough. It's 373 pages, but the size of the book is only about half the size of a normal hardcover. The cover states that Dennis Danvers is hard at work at a sequel, which I will definitely pick up as soon as it comes out.
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