**Full review below.**
I feel terrible giving this such a low rating but the book deserves it. The worst thing is, this is a cool premise that could have been turned into a worthwhile story, but this book is incoherent, illogical, disjointed, contrived, and though supposedly written for ages 14 and up, reads like it's for fourth graders.

The best thing about this book was that it inspired me to google �ÛÏmirror boxes‰Û and read more about the therapeutic uses (often called ‰ÛÏanecdotal‰Û by physicians, which is a fancy way of saying that they are not supported by scientific experiments) to relieve phantom limb pain in amputees. Perhaps, like optical illusion enthusiast Isaac, I feel a ‰ÛÏmacabre excitement‰Û for the ways our minds trick us into seeing and believing the impossible. It‰Ûªs just kind of freakin‰Ûª neat. I also googled the other optical illusions in Isaac‰Ûªs collection -- ‰ÛÏThe Snake‰Û, ‰ÛÏAll Is Vanity‰Û, the Necker cube, the Menger sponge, and the spiral aftereffect ‰ÛÒ and I have a fun project for you to do. Ready? Okay. Go to your favorite search engine and look at images of the rotating snake and then the spiral aftereffect. Look as long as you can. Then try to get up from your computer and walk away.

See? You‰Ûªre on the floor now. Isn‰Ûªt that cool? Oh, are you bleeding? Sorry. Maybe I should have told you to line your floor with pillows first, or put on a crash helmet.

You have to stare at optical illusions while reading this book, because it gets you in the right head space for reading something that makes so little sense. In fact, I think the book is some kind of trick. Maybe if I read it again, it will morph into a good book, kind of like the way the woman at the vanity turns into a skull in ‰ÛÏAll Is Vanity‰Û. But I don‰Ûªt think so.

The plot of this one is convoluted and disjointed, with too many threads that never connect or only connect because of some ridiculous contrivances. When Isaac uses the mirror box, a limb remains in the box even after he removes his own arms, and this phantom limb attempts to communicate with him using gestures and images. Inexplicably, it also gives Isaac visions of the past and present as seen through bathroom mirrors. (Don‰Ûªt ask.) Isaac learns that the previous owner of the mirror box was murdered after having an unneeded arm amputation, and his mother, who is in the hospital after a seizure, is the next target. Not only is she always doped up when he goes to visit, she‰Ûªs already been diagnosed (falsely) with bone cancer and is slated for an amputation. (He learns this by easily hacking into the hospital records on one of the computers at the nurse‰Ûªs stations in the two seconds that they‰Ûªre all conveniently away.) His mother is also a pianist, just like the previous victim! The killer nurse must hate pianists!

Seriously, guys, I can‰Ûªt explain how Isaac learns the story of the killer nurse and her previous victims, because it doesn‰Ûªt really make sense. The takeaway is that Isaac realizes he needs to rescue his mother by sneaking her out of the hospital, and that all of his investigations put him on the killer nurse‰Ûªs radar. Because she has the power of medical red tape, apparently, she attempts to get rid of Isaac by drugging him, telling others he passed out, and signing false medical orders while he‰Ûªs unconscious, which leads to him having invasive medical treatments (he gets a freakin‰Ûª endoscopy and a CAT scan!) at the hands of unbelievably unaware doctors who are just following ‰ÛÏorders‰Û. These scenes are terrifying, to be sure, especially the endoscopy, but they also had me screaming at the lack of plausibility.

Equally implausible is the scene where Isaac eventually convinces his mother‰Ûªs doctor that something is wrong with her treatment and they confront the killer nurse together, who the doctor confesses she‰Ûªs always been suspicious of. The doctor is all, ‰ÛÏwhy is my patient always unconscious‰Û, ‰ÛÏwhy is my patient‰Ûªs diagnosis suddenly saying osteosarcoma when she had no symptoms a week ago‰Û, ‰ÛÏwhy does my patient suddenly have a huge sore on her arm and her son says you are burning her with acid‰Û ‰ÛÒ but THEN ‰ÛÒ duh duh duuuuuuuh ‰ÛÒ her beeper goes off. Too bad, she has to do an emergency brain surgery that could take hours! Sorry, Isaac, you‰Ûªre on your own! Let‰Ûªs not even bother to CALL SECURITY to investigate the obvious mistreatment and forging of medical records we just discovered!

My recommendation to stare at optical illusions so long that you fall down serves another purpose, as well; it‰Ûªs especially important to understand a key scene in this book, because Isaac literally fells all of the people on a hospital floor with the spiral aftereffect. Isaac‰Ûªs version of the optical illusion, in addition to being portable and able to be wielded like some kind of Dizzy Ray, is somehow hypnotic, because nobody thinks of closing their eyes, or looking away, or anything. They just stare at it until they collapse. Even the killer nurse, coming at him with a drill saw.

And those are some of the many, many illogical things that happen in this book. Some more include Isaac‰Ûªs grandfather suddenly shaking off his Alzheimer‰Ûªs/dementia in order to help Isaac rescue his mother; a bullying set of identical twins that hate Isaac suddenly agreeing to help him; a school buddy accepting Isaac‰Ûªs crazy story about the killer nurse and the phantom limb by saying ‰ÛÏI‰Ûªd think you were crazy, except . . . for some reason I don‰Ûªt‰Û; and one scene in particular that kills me every time, when Isaac decides to go to bed for the night just after he gets a huge lead in the case that tells him to go look at his optical illusions, which are just UPSTAIRS. I'm sorry, miss your 9 p.m. bed time for once!

I won‰Ûªt go into all of them, because I‰Ûªm getting punch-drunk with criticism, and aside from this novel, I respect William Sleator for many of his other works, which have maybe never been the best written but have always been thought-provoking and surprising. Skip this one, read House of Stairs or The Last Universe, and have your mind blown in a good way. ( )