From Publishers Weekly
Billed as a near-future thriller, Sagan's first novel plods through terrain all too familiar to SF readers. The narrator awakens with amnesia in a mysterious realm easily identified as a computer-generated virtual reality, fraught with metaphors and symbols. He slowly grasps that his name is Halloween, and that he may have murdered someone called Lazarus. Eventually, he realizes he's one of a handful of high school students attending "Immersive Virtual Reality" classes at the Idlewild IVR Academy, sponsored by the Gedaechtnis Corporation, a multinational biotech company. Intimidated by the villainous teacher, Maestro, and wary of his fellow students, Halloween is determined to recover his memory, apparently damaged in a power surge that threatened to destroy the IVR, and learn what really happened to the missing Lazarus. Despite a compelling twist near the middle, the low tension and meandering plot will likely frustrate the primary target audience, mainstream fans of such futuristic action films as The Matrix and Minority Report. Sagan may not be the next Philip K. Dick or William Gibson, but he shows enough talent here to suggest he can improve on pacing in the promised sequel.Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From AudioFile
A teen named Halloween awakes from a nightmare convinced someone's out to kill him. Or was it only a virtual nightmare? For that matter, is HE real? In this dystopian future nothing is certain except that our hero is in mortal danger. He must save not only himself, but the entire human race. The lad himself tells the tale in this rousing sci-fi thriller, which is interrupted occasionally by virtual warnings from a cyborg voice (impersonated by Beth McDonald and aided by clever editing). As Halloween, Clayton Barclay Jones sounds appropriately young. Unfortunately, he also sounds inexperienced. After an energetic opening, he soon disengages from his text, which he merely recites with less technique than the material demands. Y.R. © AudioFile 2004, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine

From Booklist
The tension is palpable from the first page as a young man recovering from a powerful electrical shock realizes that all he knows is that he's about 18 and a student of some kind--and that Lazarus is dead. Halloween, as he is known, becomes certain that someone wants him dead, too. He is one of 10 students attending an exclusive Immersive Virtual Reality boarding school while their bodies lie in a hospital attached to IVs and virtual-reality equipment. Add to the mix a hard-nosed virtual schoolmaster, virtual nannies, and sophisticated computer hacking as the teens try to manipulate the system. In his first novel, the son of Carl Sagan captures perfectly the voice and actions of a rebellious, extremely intelligent teenager. Though its appeal is much wider, recommend this mesmerizing, multilayered futuristic tale to fans of Card's Ender novels. Sally Estes
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

FROM OUR EDITORS

The Barnes & Noble Review
Idlewild, the debut novel by Nick Sagan -- the son of the late astronomer Carl Sagan -- is a cyberpunk thriller set in a prestigious high-tech school in Michigan, Idlewild IVR Academy, where the students spend most of their time immersed in virtual reality.

When student Gabriel Kennedy Hall (a.k.a. Halloween) awakes with amnesia, feeling like "a broken watch badly in need of winding," the only thing he knows for sure is that someone -- or something -- is trying to kill him. One of only ten students at the very competitive academy, Halloween must figure out if one of his classmates is behind it all. When another student disappears, the mystery deepens and Halloween suspects the academy's virtual headmaster, an enigmatic program named Maestro. As Halloween gets closer to unmasking the killer, the danger increases for him and the other students. When he finally disconnects himself from the virtual world and uncovers the truth about his real past and purpose, his world is rocked to its foundations.

Sagan -- who has penned numerous television scripts, including screenplays for Star Trek: The Next Generation and Star Trek: Voyager -- has written a story reminiscent of his father's classic novel Contact. Both look at Earth, and humanity, for that matter, as a kind of grand experiment of apprentice deities -- only in Idlewild, the gods are a group of desperate scientists. Why are we here? Where are we headed? Nick Sagan's vision is dark, stylish and, ultimately, completely enthralling. Paul Goat Allen

FROM THE PUBLISHER

A young man is suddenly startled awake. He has no memory. He knows only one thing for certain: Someone is trying to kill him.

Unsure of whom to trust, he is reacquainted with eight companions-trainees of an enigmatic figure known as Maestro. As he attempts to unearth his past and outwit an unseen enemy, skills he never knew he had come into play. And it soon becomes clear that there is far more than his life at stake...

Author Biography: Nick Sagan has been a screenwriter for ten years. Idlewild is his first novel. The son of astronomer and novelist Carl Sagan, he lives in Ithaca, New York.

FROM THE CRITICS

Entertainment Weekly

A young man wakes up in a dreamlike landscape where he has strange powers but no memory... Sagan provides plenty of suspense and perfectly captures the angry adolescent solipsism that makes kids into hackers and superheroes.

San Francisco Chronicle - August 24, 2003

...a worthwhile read.

Book Sense - Erin Coston, Davis-Kidd Booksellers

Idlewild opens in a Tim Burton-esque world, flowing into The Matrix, and ending in a world reminiscent of Philip K. Dick. Our narrator, Halloween, awakes with a bout of amnesia and the feeling that someone is trying to kill him. As he slowly regains his memory, he learns that life￯﾿ﾽreal and virtual￯﾿ﾽis not what he thinks. Sagan's brilliant!

John Toon - Infinity Plus

It happens￯﾿ﾽall too rarely, but it happens￯﾿ﾽthat once in a while a debut novel comes along and grabs you by the unmentionables and swings there, laughing like a maniac and refusing to let go. From the moment Halloween wakes up with amnesia and starts piecing his life together, Idlewild has your groin in its sights. Halloween soon discovers that he's one of ten students at a very special school, and any one of them or their tutor Maestro could be trying to kill him. This is, however, merely the first stage of an unfolding story, and Sagan seems to delight in changing the rules just when you think you've got the hang of them. Some of the plot developments are guessable, but there's plenty to confound the reader's expectations, and all of it is couched in engaging, well-paced prose. It's a very lively novel, and yet at its heart it's actually pretty bleak. The amnesiac Halloween doesn't much like what he finds out about himself, but he's then forced to swap that for an even less palatable truth. Loss defines him, from the loss of his memory to the loss of his friends to loss of control over his life. When he finally takes charge of his destiny, it's with precious little hope for the future, and the story ends on a very melancholic note. And yet this isn't bleakness for its own sake, but a clear progression throughout the novel. Sagan gets right inside his protagonist's head and makes him utterly believable. His fellow students are a little less remarkable as characters￯﾿ﾽI had trouble telling a couple of them apart￯﾿ﾽbut they are at least interestingly dysfunctional. Halloween definitely shines, though, as does the temperamental Maestro. As a novel, this is one of the best I've read all year. As a debut, it's utterly astonishing. I look forward to seeing more from Nick Sagan.

Andrea Hoag - San Francisco Chronicle

The author's compelling tendency to interweave mythology with his story sets him apart from less gifted writers in this literary niche. Read all 14 "From The Critics" >

WHAT PEOPLE ARE SAYING

A genuine page-turner. Absolutely fun, like a rollercoaster ride of fusion fiction: starts out like Amber meets The Matrix, and as it goes on, it turns into several something elses￯﾿ﾽ Gripping￯﾿ﾽ the kind of book you simply don￯﾿ﾽt want to stop reading. — Neil Gaiman