Let me begin by saying I really liked Ready Player One, and in the search for similar books, I saw suggestions that I should try LitRPG. I went through many of those, but they were all so heavily into the RPG side of the equation that I was disappointed. Some were good, even very good, but they didn’t have the balance of “Lit” (by which I mean real-life as opposed to game life) that I enjoyed in RPO.
I’m not saying this book is as good as RPO, but after 20 or so other LitRPG novels it’s quite a relief to finally find an author interested in real-world character development in addition to spectacular gaming scenes.
What’s interesting here are the multiple layers of plot: personal high-school battles, corporate profit vs. game safety intrigues, development of an artificial intelligence and its “human rights,” and of course the action within the RPG itself. Its a complex plot running at different times and locales, but all interconnected, which makes up for a lot of well-trodden ideas.
There are some background weaknesses in this book having to do with not-very-well worked out details of the game itself. If time is running 3-4 times faster in the game world, the switch back and forth to the real world doesn’t make sense for various parts of the story. The book mentions these issues, but it ignores resulting problems except when it’s convenient to the plot. In addition, the characters are pretty shallow and one-dimensional, and the game is focused on a small population, only plausible if they came from one city instead of around the world. (Simple example, is there really just one Jason and one Frank among the millions who sign up?) The opening was probably suggested by an editor who wanted an exciting start, but it’s just confusing if you don’t know that Jason is going to be the protagonist, so reread it after you finish.
The biggest problem with the audio version is the narrator. He does good “nerd” and “stiff computer character” but the rest of the voices are a mess. He doesn’t have distinct voices for each character, the accents of individual characters change at times, his narration voice is often the same as the character voice in the surrounding text, etc. This makes it hard to figure out who is speaking without paying close attention to the exact wording. I don’t want to be mean, but it sounds like someone reading it for the first time.
So the story has some flaws, and the narration is weak, but I’m still giving this 5 stars overall because it’s such a relief after all the overly RPG-heavy books I’ve read.