Discloser: I made it 2 1/2 hours in and have already decided that I can’t finish the book, so I can’t give you a review of the ENTIRE book, and I will tell you why I stopped prematurely.
I like to listen to new books WITHOUT reading the reviews to give them the benefit of the doubt, and if I don’t like them I go back and read what others liked/disliked and compare with my own experience. That being said, after throwing in the towel after 2.5 hours, I went to the reviews and there were a few 1 stars that summed up my thoughts quite succinctly. This told me the story, performance, and writing were going to be the same as the start: Shallow and Boring.
Character development is minimal to the extreme, and perhaps that’s for the best since they aren’t interesting people. Internal dialogue can be very tricky to use without making visual descriptions become obsolete. This also removes all questions you would have for character’s decisions which makes the admittedly limited character development boring. There is a LOT of internal dialogue which does a good job solidifying your disinterest of the MC, and solidifying your hate for the main antagonist. The MC is monotone in personality and purpose. He has no driving force except the desire to be good at video games, which is as good a drive as any, but man is it boring and makes it difficult to maintain interest. But that is mainly due to him not being interesting. The MC is a noob, and it shows, but all these other players who have been playing for literally years don’t know anything except helpful bits of info the MC conveniently probes them for in order to explain something to the reader.
The antagonist makes you want to rage quit each chapter he is in, not because he’s a good villain, but because he’s a psychopath. I don’t know which is more disturbing: reading the internal dialogue of a psychopath or an author deciding to write the internal dialogue of one. Either way it leaves you uncomfortable at best. The villain/antagonist doesn’t need to be likable by any means, but the internal dialogue artificial builds your hatred for him. It’s like describing a man sitting in a park watching a mother and her baby walk by in a stroller then tell the reader he’s thinking about killing the baby. There is no evidence of this, it just makes you hate him, because you know what he’s thinking.
The idea of the story is interesting, but not explained well. The AI so smart that no one understands it, and so dumb it ruins millions of people’s lives by accident and no one can repair it. Oh and all of the devs were in game at the same time during an update… any software engineer would tell you point blank that would never fly. And apparently anyone with a brain so no one could pull the figurative or perhaps literal plug to rescue millions of people.
Interesting but not novel is how I would describe my first impression. But overall would be the title and idea are interesting, but quickly becomes boring and uninteresting as you get deeper in. Prepare yourself for uncomfortable, pointless, and boring internal dialogue with weird reverb audio effects that drive you crazy. Also hope you like reading about people drinking elixirs and people being “really good at video games” by exploiting a single limitation of the most advanced and powerful AI… ever… inconsistencies abound.