John Chu is a “sherpa", a paid guide to online role-playing games like the popular Call to Wizardry. For a fee, he and his crew will provide you with a top-flight character equipped with the best weapons and armor, and take you dragon-slaying in the Realms of Asgarth, hunting rogue starships in the Alpha Sector, or battling hordes of undead in the zombie apocalypse.
Chu’s new client, the pseudonymous Mr. Jones, claims to be a “wealthy, famous person” with powerful enemies, and he’s offering a ridiculous amount of money for a comprehensive tour of the world of virtual-reality gaming. For Chu, this is a dream assignment, but as the tour gets underway, he begins to suspect that Mr. Jones is really North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un, whose interest in VR gaming has more to do with power than entertainment. As if that weren’t enough to deal with, Chu also has …
John Chu is a “sherpa", a paid guide to online role-playing games like the popular Call to Wizardry. For a fee, he and his crew will provide you with a top-flight character equipped with the best weapons and armor, and take you dragon-slaying in the Realms of Asgarth, hunting rogue starships in the Alpha Sector, or battling hordes of undead in the zombie apocalypse.
Chu’s new client, the pseudonymous Mr. Jones, claims to be a “wealthy, famous person” with powerful enemies, and he’s offering a ridiculous amount of money for a comprehensive tour of the world of virtual-reality gaming. For Chu, this is a dream assignment, but as the tour gets underway, he begins to suspect that Mr. Jones is really North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un, whose interest in VR gaming has more to do with power than entertainment. As if that weren’t enough to deal with, Chu also has to worry about “Ms. Pang,” who may or may not be an agent of the People’s Republic of China, and his angry ex-girlfriend, Darla Jean Covington, who isn’t the type to let an international intrigue get in the way of her own plans for revenge.
What begins as a whirlwind online adventure soon spills over into the real world. Now Chu must use every trick and resource at his disposal to stay one step ahead—because in real life, there is no reset button.
A gripping cyberpunk thriller. Reading it, I was struck by how much little of it is actually "science fiction" in the sense of describing technologies that don't exist yet. I'm pretty sure the "bullets" described don't exist, but much of the rest could just be a story of the world as it is right now.
And of course, the "on the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog" subplot has been a reality for decades, and is masterfully executed here.
Oh, yes. This is 2020’s Ready Player One, without a doubt. I regularly give books 5 stars, but this one is going into that exclusive pile that I pick up to reread time and time again.
I laughed aloud at regular intervals. Chu is almost as much of a badass as John Lago, and even if he’s a little more jaded than Wade Watts with a harder edge and more filial piety, he also has a butt-ton of US military support to call in when he needs to.
The multitudinous use of game genres was most excellent, the callouts and backreferencing tremendous (“Ensign Kim” and the INEXHAUSTIBLE PRICKLY HORSE got me); the big reveal foreshadowed but still very, very good fun, and most of all, the thing that I found most rousing was the fact that the lines between VR and RL blurred exquisitely, the action in each felt as …
Oh, yes. This is 2020’s Ready Player One, without a doubt. I regularly give books 5 stars, but this one is going into that exclusive pile that I pick up to reread time and time again.
I laughed aloud at regular intervals. Chu is almost as much of a badass as John Lago, and even if he’s a little more jaded than Wade Watts with a harder edge and more filial piety, he also has a butt-ton of US military support to call in when he needs to.
The multitudinous use of game genres was most excellent, the callouts and backreferencing tremendous (“Ensign Kim” and the INEXHAUSTIBLE PRICKLY HORSE got me); the big reveal foreshadowed but still very, very good fun, and most of all, the thing that I found most rousing was the fact that the lines between VR and RL blurred exquisitely, the action in each felt as real as the other, and that was fantastic. Cline did it well too, and it works to perhaps even a higher standard here.
An unequivocal thumbs up from me. I was hooked on this one and swallowed it in but a few short hours.
