♂ His and ♀ Her Reviews

Once step arrives to Eight Bits Inc, he finds that not everything is as it appeared to be. Doing
freelance work he programmed a game called Hacker Snack, which made him alot of money.
Now he has joined the company under the job title of “Manual Writer”, but once he gets there
he finds out that he is to head the writing of the manuals, but the boss Ray Keene, also wants
his creative input on the programs the company is developing. All of this has to be done behind
the back of Dicky one of the higher ups. During the times at Eight Bits Inc, Step meets a weird
fellow named Glass. They call him Glass from his D&D character.

Just as Step is starting his first day at work, his son Stevie is starting his first day of school.
From the very first day, Step and DeAnne notice a big difference in Stevie. He seems more
depressed and withdrawn more than usual and it only seems to be getting worse.

Step and DeAnne are devout Mormons. They have brought there kids up to be the same.
Upon questioning Stevie about his 2nd grade project, he says that the other kids ruined it,
but when DeAnne goes up to the school she speaks with the Librarian who said that Stevie
won first place. Than DeAnne goes back home and questions Stevie, who admits that he
was to win 1st place, but his teacher Mrs. Jones took the ribbon from him and was going to
send it home with another kid. It all started on the first day, Stevie couldn’t understand
none of the other kids so they all made fun of him. Than when he told DeAnne, she called
the school and got Mrs. Jones in trouble. So ever since than Mrs. Jones has been singling
Stevie out. Step solves the situation though. He goes to speak with her and puts a tape
recorder in his pocket and records her total confession. Thus she quits her teaching job in
order to keep her respect and dignity.

Step goes to a computer convention, on a trip Eight Bits Inc is paying for. Since he has
been long wanting out of his job he decides to try and get some contracts to port his
game Hacker Snack onto other systems. When he finally meets with one good computer
software company, this opens up the window he needs to finally quit his job at Eight Bits Inc.

In his depressed state, Step and DeAnnes notice that Stevie has started inventing
some imaginary friends. So in their attempts to make sure he isn’t going crazy they
take him to a therapist. This also allows the introduction of the character Lee Weeks,
Dr. Weeks son. He is a crazy one indeed. He thinks that god talks directly to him, and
commands him on crazy shit to do.

While all of this is going on, here and there in the newspaper it keeps talking about little boys
disappearing. Step and DeAnne make a connection between the names of Stevies imaginary
friends and the boys who have been disappearing. So Immediately they contact Doug Douglas,
the man in charge of investigations over these cases.

Than at the end of the book you get the biggest surprise. Proving once again why Card is such a
wonderful book. Stevie finally wants his friends to come in and spend Christmas Eve with his family.
When he gets inside you find out that his friends _are_ all the boys who have turned up missing.
At this point Step makes a comment that just about killed me. “At that moment, I realized that
there were 8 boys buried under the house, instead of just 7.” That just about killed me. To find out
that Stevie had found out that the killer had been killing the boys and bring them there to bury them.

The writer created an unusual cast of characters. Trying to predict the outcome is virtually
impossible