This is going to be a short review:
Read this book.
Well, maybe that’s too short. Let me try again:
a) Stuff to like: If you happen to like virtual reality, there’s that. If you’re into characters who are believable and easy to identify with, there’s that. If you’re into complex mysteries threaded through a SF setting, there’s that.
Taia is a great protagonist. AKH said on Twitter that she wanted to do something different than the semi-standard “zero to hero” VR plot. She does. Taia is a perfectly nice young woman, and when playing the game, she’s . . . a nice young woman who’s about number 7000 to achieve her most desired goal. Not the first, not special, pretty okay at important tasks, but not the best.
She works hard, but not the hardest. She takes leadership roles, but not in a pushy way. She is loyal to her friends and has a good relationship with her family — well, maybe not her grandmother so much.
She’s suspicious of her “alien overlord supervisor,” Dio, but she doesn’t figure out the truth before the end. (Neither did I.) She’s not sure Dio’s a real person, of course, for quite a while, since the game is supposed to be purely a VR game, it just seems too advanced to be true. (It is. )
I like the secondary characters too. Especially, yes, Dio, but also most of the others. And the worldbuilding, most of it. The VR stuff is reminiscent of the Touchstone technology, but not the same.
b) Stuff not to like: This is a slow-paced story for most of its length. There is tons of worldbuilding given the VR game. Tons. I didn’t mind this, but this is not a story that hurtles out of the starting gate.
Nor is this a particularly intense book, until the end. Remember how Cassandra was really thrown off the deep end and in an intense situation right away? Not here.
c) Stuff not to worry about: Don’t play massive online games yourself? Don’t really play computer games at all? No problem! You will see some reviews that imply it helps to have some awareness of the online gaming world. Maybe so, but I have zero experience with any of that and didn’t feel like anything was hard to follow.
Also, this is a self-contained book, more or less. The big reveal happens, so we have that. We’ve got the set up for the next book. Big things are about to happen, but the fundamental mystery — that is solved.
Overall:
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I have barely started, but the foreshadowing just screams “‘Ender’s Game’ in virtual reality.” I could be wrong on the details of course.
The impulse to spoil is surprisingly intense, but I will heroically resist.
Oh I’m relieved that this is a positive review — I bought the book as soon as I realised it existed, but I’ve told myself I have to finish my library books before I can read it.
I’m glad you mentioned it, as I hadn’t noticed its arrival yet. I immediately bought it and have now finished it. Wow, the ending is intense, and I hadn’t seen it coming at all.
I’m still thinking about it.
I have a very little knowledge of gaming, as I’ve played Guild Wars 2 on and off for nearly two years now, but only in a very relaxed and newby sort of way. I don’t like books that remind me too much of a computer game set on paper, as those stories always seem too limited and predictable. This is definitely not one of those stories. The game is the setting, not the storyline.
As with all Andrea K. Höst’s books, I liked it a lot.
Beware: Minor spoilers.
Well, I figured out some of it, but not the actual ending. It was clearly a horror story painted in bubblegum colors, but the horror stayed latent til the very end. And I figured out the minor reveal just before the System Challenge. But it was hard, hard going through all those game descriptions. In retrospect, the reason for them is obvious: as an environment to hide Easter Eggs. But a slog nonetheless.
I didn’t mind the long descriptions, mostly, so for me, slow, yes, but not an actual slog. And I will say, I got the minor reveal the second that character stepped on stage — if we’re thinking of the same thing