Hacker by Ted Dekker
Also by this author: The Promise, The Drummer Boy, Sinner, Green, The Dream Traveler's Quest, Into the Book of Light, The Curse of Shadownman, The Garden and the Serpent, The Final Judgment, Millie Maven and the Bronze Medallion
Series: The Outlaw Chronicles #3
Published by Worthy on May 20, 2014
Genres: Fiction, Christian, Suspense
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My name is Nyah and I'm a hacker. I know things most people would never believe. Things that shouldn't exist, but do.
Seventeen year old Nyah Parks is a genius hacker who makes a living by cracking the firewalls of the world's largest corporations. But when the biggest job of her life goes wrong she's plunged into a desperate situation with only one way out: one last hack that will either save her or kill her. In Hacker, Ted Dekker crafts a modern day parable that examines the staggering world around us, the seen and unseen, and reminds us that there's far more to who we are than meets the eye.

Hacker | Ted Dekker

Nyah Parks is a hacker extraordinaire with an interesting way of building her client base. Obviously, corporations don’t like it when you can hack into their systems. They pay hackers lots of money to try to exploit any flaws in their security. Nyah likes doing things backward. Compromise the system, then offer to show them where the flaws are. Except this time she’s gotten in over her head.

Now on the run, and under watch from the FBI, Nyah holes up with Austin, a fellow hacker whose been studying a computer unlike any other—the human brain. Austin opens Nyah up to a world of new possibilities, possibly even another plane of existence. Nyah is able to jump out of her mind like a modern-day prophet and see the future. And what she sees is personally devastating.

In Hacker, Ted Dekker dives deep into Nyah’s psyche, recounting her need to avert the upcoming catastrophe while also avoiding capture. Maybe she can even learn to hack into reality and change it with her mind.

Hacker is a fast-paced YA novel with a sci-fi feel that loosely ties back into the first book in the Outlaw Chronicles, Eyes Wide Open. It’s a good novel, but it didn’t hit me with the same emotional power as the other two. The pace is sometimes too quick for the subject matter—a cerebral novel deserves a cerebral tone. I didn’t feel like this novel had quite as much substance as previous novels. The plotlines often seem disconnected and I didn’t connect with the characters nearly as much. I think the novel simply lacked the depth that I’m used to with Ted. Interesting for a novel that focuses on a deep, philosophical theme.

The Outlaw Chronicles as a whole has been an interesting experiment for Ted. The writing style is somewhat different, the release format has been different, it’s with a publisher he’s not worked with before this, it has a young adult theme, and it loosely connects to two other novels from two other publishers (yet, you can read any one of the Outlaw Chronicles in any order and understand the story entirely). I kind of see the Outlaw Chronicles as the Lost Books of Outlaw, expanding upon the universe of Outlaw, while subtly extending minor storylines of other books. In Hacker, Ted Dekker gives the Outlaw Chronicles a so-so send off, but still has me interested.