Books

Mid-Year Freakout Book Tag

Kluwes1 Comment

I was tagged for this by JD Weber of alligators and aneurysms!. Thanks JD!

These sorts of round up posts are fun to write because they make me think back on everything I’ve read this past year. Though, I tend to forget what books are about about a day or two after I read them, so that makes things more difficult….I really had to wrack my brain for some of these.

How Many Books Have I Read So Far?

I’ve read 24 books this year. My goal for the year is 30 so I’m well on my way to meeting that. Unlike last year, the majority of books I’ve read so far have not been novella’s. In fact, I only read 3 books under 200 pages this year. Quite a change from last year, where 25% of the books I read were short. This year, I wanted to focus less on the number of books read and read some longer books. I appears I’ve done a good job of that. I’ve read 5 books this year over 500 pages as opposed to 1 last year.

Best Book You’ve Read So Far in 2025?

Lost Man’s Lane by Scott Carson.

Technically, I started reading this one at the end of 2024 but I finished it in January. So it counts! It’s one of those books I couldn’t put down when I started it and still think about occasionally. It’s such a perfect mix of childhood nostalgia and weird, supernatural horror. Also, it had some oddly satisfying rock climbing scenes and a ghost snake. Can’t forget about the ghost snake.

Best Sequel You’ve Read so Far in 2025?

Onyx Storm by Rebecca Yarros.

Can I call the third book in a series a sequel? I guess it’s a sequel to the second book, so I’m going with it. I thought Iron Flame was kind of a drag, which I’ll get to later, but the ending intrigued me enough to solider on to Onyx Storm and I’m glad I did. It breathed some much needed new life into the series for me and felt likemuch more of an epic adventure than the previous books.

New Release You Haven’t Read Yet But Want To?

Immaculate Conception by Lin Lin Huang.

I read Natural Beauties last year and loved it. I’m excited to reading more from this author. It just so happens to be the next book my book club is reading. So I’ll definitely get to it this year!

Most Anticipated Release for the Second Half of the Year?

I don’t typically keep up with new releases but the one I am looking forward to is King Sorrow by Joe Hill. My wife and I are both Joe Hill fans and typically read his books together. I usually enjoy his short story collections more than the novels but I’m excited to read this one along with her.

Biggest Surprise?

Fourth Wing by Rebecca Yarros.

My wife wanted to read this one after everyone in our book club highly recommended it. It’s not a book I would have read on my own, but I thought it would be fun to read together. I didn’t know much about the series outside of the fact that it was a romance book with dragons. My wife loves romance books and I do not, so it was fun talking about the book with her.

I ended up enjoying it much more than I expected. Since I’m not a huge fan of romance, I skimmed over most of the spicier scenes (one was a whole chapter…come on!). I am, however, easily entertained, give me a magic school where people fight each other to the death and ride dragons and I’m perfectly content.

According to my notes, I thought the world was a bit one dimensional. Dragon riding people vs Griffon riding people but, considering how thing play out, I suppose it’s meant to be like that. I also really liked the supporting characters enough that I wanted to find out what happened in the next book.

Biggest Disappointment?

Iron Flame by Rebecca Yarros.

It was hard to come up with a book for this one. If I’m disappointed by a book I’m not going to read it. Life’s too short to read bad books. I also don’t keep track of them, so I have no idea what I’ve started and never finished.

Considering how much I liked Fourth Wing, I felt Iron Flame was a weak follow up. It was longer than it needed to be and dragged on quite a bit. It could have been two different books,really, and would have been perfectly fine that way. I got really tired of Violet and Xaden arguing about the same things over, and over, and over again. I did read this right after finishing Fourth Wing, so perhaps, I needed a longer break from those two. The rest of the characters remained great though!

Favorite New Author?

For this one, I’m going with a new to me author because finding out if I’ve read a book by a new-new author is more work than I’m ready to put in right now. So I’ll go with Matt Dinniman. I’ve been ripping through the Dungeon Crawler Carl series over the last few weeks, reading three in a row. I’ll probably take a little break and read something else, but I fully intend on finishing the series.

Newest Fictional Crush?

Princess Donut from Dungeon Crawler Carl.

A fluffy, Persian cat who knows what she wants and shoots lasers out of her eyes. What’s not to love?!?

New Favorite Character?

Carl from Dungeon Crawler Carl.

Ever since finishing the Dresden Files, I’ve been looking for a new fantasy/sci-fi male protagonist written in first person. Last year, Mennik Thorn, from Shadow of a Dead God, filled that void for me last year. This year it’s Carl. I have another 4 books in the series, so he’ll be my Dresden stand in for a while.

Underrated Gems you Discovered Recently?

Luminous by Silva Park.

This was my second choice for my favorite book of the year so far. Ithas such a unique setting where humans and robots are almost indistinguishable. It explores what it means to be human in such a world. Or robot for that matter. It’s a beautiful story and another one I’ve kept thinking about long after finishing.

Book That Made You Cry?

Beta Vulgaris by Margie Sarsfield. I found this one as a recommendation for new horror from Bookbub. From the blurb, I thought this was going to be a campy horror story about killer beets. Instead it was a book about a woman who was not happy with her life, could not deal with her depression or her anxiety, and her anxiety would not let her reach out to her support system. That’s the scary part, there just happened to be beets.

This book reflected my own anxieties and thought patterns back at me. It made me incredibly sad, but it was an excellent book.

Book That Made You Happy?

Legends & Lattes by Travis Baldree. This book is just pure happy vibes. Like, when I think about it, not a lot happened in 300 pages but it was a delightful read all the same. It also made me really crave coffee….

Favorite Book-to-Movie Adaptation You’ve Seen This Year?

I don’t watch many movies to begin with and the ones I’ve watched recently have been Disney movies with my three year old daughter. So, unless we’re counting Cinderella and Tangled as a book-to-movie adaptation of Grimm’s Fairy tales, I don’t think I’ve seen any.

Most Beautiful Book You’ve Bought This Year?

I don’t buy many physical books these days. I usually get them from the library. But I really like the covers of the hardcover editions of the Dungeon Crawler Carl series. I think they capture the essence of the wacky, over the top, campiness of the books and they look cool too!

Dungeon Crawler Carl and Carl’s Doomsday Scenario by Matt Dinniman

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I didn’t know a whole lot about Dungeon Crawler Carl before picking it up. I had heard of it, of course, but only to the extent that it was a LitRPG and a well written one at that. Other than that, I was going in blind. I came across The Gate of the Feral Gods, the fourth book in the series on the :”New” shelf at the library. I thought the cover looked interesting and, after reading the jaket, I wanted to know what was going on with this guy and his cat.

So I patiently waited for the first book to come in and then promptly devoured it (The story, not the book, that’s frowned upon).

Dungeon Crawler Carl

This book was so fun! I didn’t know what to expect going in to it. When I hear LitRPG, I think guy trapped in a video game and not, forced to fight in a dungeon, on an intergalactic, reality TV show. I’ll be honest, I wasn’t expecting to be reading scifi when I started this but I’m here for it.

I love a story where I’m learning about the world along with the characters. I think I can thank a childhood spent reading Harry Potter for that. That’s exactly what the first book in the series is and it does it very well. Carl’s thrown into this world with very little information about what’s going on, with only the clothes (or lack there of) on his back and his ex-girlfriends cat a Princess Donut. Lucky for him, the world functions like a video game, including a tutorial. Isn’t that nice!

This whole first book is Carl and Donut exploring the first two floors of the dungeon. I really got a sense of progresssion and understanding as they learned more about the dungeon, the game, and how it all functions.

After years of reading video game blogs, I felt right at home with this book. Often times, when I read about games, I get this image in my head of what a game should be, from reading people’s experiences, but when I go to play it, the game never quite lives up to the game in my head. The benefit of this setting is that the game doesn’t exist but the rules of the game do. Reading it is almost like a game itself. I found myself keeping track of Carl and Donut’s stats and items and then trying to figure out, given that information, how they could possibly get out of whatever situation they were in.

This was such an easy, and enjoyable read. I am not a fast reader and I got through this 450 page book in less than a week. I finished it so fast, I had to wait another week for the second book to come in!

Carl’s Doomsday Scenario

The second book took me a little while to get in to. It takes place on the third floor of the dungeon and picks up right where the first one left off. Carl and Donut now have a firm grasp on how the game works and what to do next, which wasn’t as exciting for me. It takes place in the Over City, which is just an endless city, with some interesting lore to it, but the majority of the book takes place in one settlement.

This floor introduces quests for Carl and Donut to do – well – ok, are forced to do. It’s less, let’s explore a dungeon and see what’s around the next corner, and more like let’s hang out in a town and solve a mystery. It’s not that’s abad thing, I just found the prep work they needed to do beforehand more interesting than when they were doing the quest.

There is a portion where Carl is on his own and it made me realize how much I enjoy Carl and Donut’s dynamic and banter. Donut is the definatley what I imagine my cat’s personality if she could talk. She always knows best, and is kind of bossing Carl around. Carl, on the other hand, is protective of Donut and really cares for her, even though she drives him crazy and get’s him into some wild situations.

There’s some flash backs to Carls previous life that are suprsinhly touching for the over the top tone of this book. For a book mainly focused on killing monster and leveling up, I wasn’t quite prepared for Carl’s character to have some emotional depth.

Even though I wasn’t hooked from the get go, I still blazed through this one. This time, I had the foresight to put the third book on hold as soon as I checked this one out so I wouldn’t have to wait as long. I can’t wait to see where this story goes next!

End of the Year Book Tag 2024

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I was tagged for this by fellow Blaugustan JD Weber at Alligators and Anerysms. I’ve been mulling over writing about books here in some form for a while. This seemed like a great way to dip my toes into that. I’ve never participated in a blog tag before but it sure is nice to have a post already laid out for me!

The tag was originally created by booktuber Ariel Bissett.

Are there any books you started this year that you need to finish?

I’ve been meaning to finish reading Gorel and the Pot-Bellied God by Lavie Tidhar for a while now. It’s not very long, only 88 pages, but it’s only available from my library through Hoopla. That means I can only read it on my phone or my computer. It’s a toss up between which device I dislike reading a book on more.

Do you have an autumnal book to transition into the end of the year?

It’s still technically autumn right? At least for a few more days even if it doesn’t feel like it. I usually don’t intentionally pick out books to read that correspond with the seasons/holidays but I came across Secret Santa by Andrew Shaffer while looking for a book to submit for my book clubs Christmas book theme. Everyone else was submitting Halmark-esque Chirstmans rom coms, which I will always gladly read but I thought I’d add something else to the mix It’s a christmas horror book which is not something I’ve read before but I like the idea of spooky christmas. I’m only a few chapters in, but it seems like it’s going to be a quick read and a fun one too!

For anyone curious, my book club ended up reading Christmas Eve Love Story by Ginny Baird which was a Halmakr-esque rom com but with a time loop!

Is there a new release you’re still waiting for?

Nope, not this year at least. I don’t typically keep up on new book releases unless I’m in the middle of a series, which I’m not this year. Next year though, I’m eagerly awaiting the release of King Sorrow by Joe Hill. He’s one of my favorite authors, so I always look forward to anything new from him.

I’m also looking forward to The Ashfire King by Chelsea Abdullah. I listened to the first book in the series, The Stardust Thief almost two years ago at this point. I’m definately going to need a refresher on the story so far when the second book comes out.

What are three books you want to read before the end of the year?

I’m kind of in the middle of a whole bunch of books at the moment that I would like to finish up before this year’s end.

  • The Deepest Map: The High-Stakes Race to Chart the World’s Oceans by Laura Trethewey
  • Death of a Timeline by Courteney Levet
  • Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer

I’m about halfway through The Deepest Map and Death of a Timeline so I’m fairly confident I can finish both of those before the end of the year. I’ve been meaning to read Annihilation for years but it was just recently recommended to me again by my sister. We’ll see if the library hold comes in by the end of the year, it’s currently 2 weeks out…

Have you already started making reading plans for 2025?

This year, I made an effort to read books off of my TBR pile, especially those that have been sitting there for years. It’s interesting to see how my tastes and interests have changed or haven’t changed since I started adding books ten or so years ago. I’m planning on doing the same next year, specifically tackling some of the longer books on the list. I set a reading goal every year but next year I think I’ll focus more on Pages Read goal over a number of books goal to accommodate that.

Long Books from the Library

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As I was attempting to catch up with my Blaugust feed this week, I came across Axxuy’s post on checking out big books from the library. I’ve been doing a lot of reading this year and, subsequently, have done some thinking on my own reading habits.

Auxxy says:

I’ve checked out many books of short stories or poems and some of the breezier nonfiction. But I stay away from the big books, even the ones I would like to read. The trouble of course is that you do have to bring the books back, and sooner than later. I feel cramped by the due dates.

I find myself frequently avoiding checking out big books. Even those I’ve had on my to-read list for years.

I am lucky enough to live in an area with three large library systems. I rarely buy books and can almost always find what I’m looking digitally unless a title is very popular and/or very new. There are usually enough copies (or lack of interest from other patrons) that my loans auto-renew. Still, due dates do add some extra stress to finishing a book. Even more so with digital loans. I have been guilt tripped many times by Libby informing me there are multiple people waiting for a book that I haven’t opened in a week.

I am a life long reader but I am a slow reader. I’m constantly below the “Typical time to read” on Kindle books by at least a few hours for fiction books. Who know’s how accurate that stat is though. I finish one or two average sized books a month. Sometimes three if I’m really pushing it. This used to bother me, but it doesn’t so much any more. I found forcing myself to try to read faster just wasn’t enjoyable. It’s not a competition after all.

The time required for me to finish a book makes me hesitate to grab long books of the digital and physical shelf. I really need to be in the right head space for it. If the book is more than 400ish pages it’s probably the only book I’m reading until for the next 3 weeks. But when the mood strikes, and I go to check out something big, I know most of my free time will be spent reading. I recently read Kelly Link’s The Book of Love which is just over 600 pages. It’s, by far, the longest book I’ve read this year. While I did enjoy it, I had to spend an average of 2 hours a day reading to finish it before the 3 week loan ran out. Leaving me with little time to do anything else.

If it’s non-fiction, then forget it, I’m buying the ebook and I will absolutely spread it out over several months no matter how long it is.

Fun Money

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Mission to Zyxx has been my go-to weekly podcast for the last year and a half and I was very content listening each week for free. They had a Patreon and released bonus content there but I was never intrigued enough to actually donate. This season they have moved to the Maximum Fun network which allows users to donate to the show through them with reward tiers and such. It seems like a more specialized podcast focused Patreon. In episode 2 of season 3  Seth Lynn said something that really stuck with me. It was: “Think about what your life would be like without Mission to Zyxx.” I know the whole point of this 10-minute spiel was to get people to donate but at the same time, it made me realize that I can’t expect other people to support the things I like if I don’t support the things I like. While it may be a silly improvised sci-fi podcast it’s something that’s important to me and if it went away I’d be heartbroken. So I subscribed, good on you Seth you’re a guilt marketing genius.

I’ve come to this realization that It’s OK to spend money on things I like. Especially things that I enjoy and have been enjoying for a while. I know this sounds like common sense but it really struck me only a few months ago.

I was playing Black Desert heavily for a while. When I first started, I looked at the prices of cash shop items and thought ” $40 for an outfit, that’s outrageous.” But after 100+ hours in a month, I bought 5 pets and a value pack for $50 and felt no guilt. I’ve gotten more enjoyment and playtime out of BDO than a $60 AAA title.

I’m starting to feel the same way about Trove. I actually bought the starter pack because it gave me 4 inventory expanders for $5 instead of $20. Did I need those inventory slots? No, but they are nice to have and make the game a little more enjoyable. I also have picked up the freemium subscription, the patron pass that gives a lot of great boosts for 2 months now. I’ve complained in the past that free to play games tend to milk their customers for money and I felt that way very strongly about Trove under Trion. But I look at steam and see 500 hours played. Maybe after 500 hours, they deserve a little compensation no? A little too late for Trion but at least Trove is still around.

I remember the first time I asked my parents to buy something for me for an online game. They looked at me like I had 2 heads. Why would you want to spend real money to dress up a character in a video game and why do you need to pay monthly for a video game. I had no disposable income of my own so I lived the F2Per’s life and grinded through Runescape, Flyff, and countless other free to play MMO’s. Thank god Guild Wars was a buy to play the game without a subscription otherwise I may never have played my favorite game of all time.

This carried over even when I had a disposable income of my own. Why would I pay for this virtual item when I could buy a whole game. Why would I pay a subscription every month when I can buy a game and play it forever. But here’s the thing. Those microtransactions are in games I actually enjoy playing. Those subscriptions have been the price of admission to some really great games. And those games I bought for $20 on steam are still sitting there unplayed.

My budgeted “fun money” is going to be spent anyways. Might as well spend it on something I’m enjoying right now and support the continued development or existence of it.

RMT: You can pay for that?

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I just finished reading Play Money by Jullian Dibbell. Half the book talks about the economics of Real Money Trading (RMT) in the early 2000’s and the other half is the author talking about his own foray into RMT with Ultima Online. Apparently  there was a lot of money to be made from selling items, gold, houses, and accounts in 2004. That tag line is a little misleading, I don’t think anyone in this book made millions from RMT.

It got me thinking about where RMT is today. I know it still exists because every time I’m in a large city in Final Fantasy XIV I see a whole lot of shouts from gold sellers plugging their websites. Our group tried out Path of Exile and sure enough the chat log was full of currency sellers.  I’m wondering how profitable it is these days? Are that many people buying gold?

I always thought it was weird that games were selling things like level boosts, trade-able subscription tokens, or in Guild Wars 2 case, converting cash shop currency into in game gold. But if a player really wants gold, or certain item,or to skip leveling and there isn’t a way to do that within the game then they’re going to go outside the game. So why not get in on the action by offering these services to their players directly.

Personally, I’ve never thought about buying gold but I’ve bought a few trade-able cash shop items if I needed some funds for an armor set or weapons. It’s basically the same thing but without the risk of trusting a third party on the internet to deliver the goods after sending them money.

Of course there’s still tons of way to buy large quantities of gold, individual item, accounts, and even raid clears. The strangest thing by far is division boosting in competitive games. I can understand buying items and what not for an MMO where at least your going to keep the item. But what is the point of paying for someone else to play a game for you to get you to a higher division if you’re not good enough to get there on your own? Your just going to lose it anyways and this stuffs not cheap.

Actually I’m surprised about how expensive this stuff is in general. The gold by far is the cheapest, items can range from few dollars to hundreds, and accounts are sold for hundreds of dollars each depending on the game. And the scope of games is huge. It seems like as long as there’s an online component to a game there’s some one selling something for it.

This is a side of games I’ve never though about before and I’m not sure how I feel about it. On the one hand, it’s just a game and if someone wants to drop $600 dollars on an account more power to them. If or when that accounts get banned well that’s what you get for not playing buy the rules. This of course is assuming the seller is the original owner. It’s also annoying to be spammed by gold sellers or see bots all over the place.

 

 

 

2017 Resolutions

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Well it’s a tad bit overdue but the year is still fresh. Only 10 days in and already 2017 shaping up to be an interesting year. As the New Year struck I was struck by an awful cold that left me out of commission for a few days. On my way to work last week my car’s driver side power window motor died leaving my window stuck down for a few days, not a lot of fun to drive in the cold and snow. Finally, this past weekend I drove back to my parents house, about 4 hours away from me, and in the middle of a white out my windshield wiper fell off making the last few hours a real challenge But it’s not all bad, the year can only get better from here!

Buy Less and Play More

This goes for games as well as books. I have a bad habit of buying more than I can play or only playing a game for a few days before moving on to something else. I rarely finish games and it’s part of h reason I started my personal backlog challenge. So the goal for the year is to play/ finish more games and books than I buy which shouldn’t be that hard because there’s nothing coming out in the nex few months that I’m looking forward too. Though I said the same thing last year where the only game I wanted wasn’t suppose to release until July, I ended up buying at least one game a month anyways.

When It Sucks Stop Reading/Playing It

This one goes more for the books side of things. Every year I set a reading goal oer at Goodreads usually around 20 books. Last year I tried 25 books and I was able to meet my goal, even exceed it by 6 books. The thing is some times it felt like a chore to read and the looming fact that I had to read at least 2 books a month to finish made reading just a little less enjoyable. I’m finding the same as I’ve been working though my backlog. Originally my goal was to finish every game. I thought if I liked it enough to buy it I should be able to finish it. I’ve found that not everything is great and not everything interests me enough to finis it. I think this year I’ll just play games until they no longer interest me. I also have to get better at putting down books when I know they aren’t good instead of forcing myself to finish them.

Change Things Up.

I read a lot of fantasy last year. In fact more than half of the 32 books I read last year were fantasy and quite frankly I’m sick of it. So I’d like to read a little more outside my comfort zone. I’m thinking some murder mysteries, some drama, maybe a romance, and I need to read way more non fiction this year The same goes for games, I feel like I played a lot of the same kind of game last year and while it’s fun to play things I know I’ll like I also have a wonderful library where I can take some chances on other games for free. And PS Plus gives me access to some different games every month and I never try them out. I’ll try to do more of that this year.

Book Review: The Sword of Midras

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Sword of Midras

Ever wonder what a book would be like if a bunch of NPCs stood around talking to each other? I give you The Sword of Midras by . Tracy Hickman, of the original DragonLance  fame, and Richard Garriott, the creator of Ultima and Shroud of the Avatar. Actually, looking at the games site, it looks like both of them are involved in Shroud of the Avatar

Our story starts a s a lot of fantasy stories do, in the middle of a battle.The Obsidian Army lay siege to the inferior city of Midras. We meet our main character, quippy Captain Aren Bennis and his equally quippy side kick Syenna. After the city is mostly defeated, the general sends Captain Bennis to find a good spot to hold his victory parade, sounds like a pretty standard MMO quest. While in the city Bennis and Syenna chase down one of the city’s priestesses. In the midst of their chase they fall into a large tomb where Aren finds a magic sword that only he can touch and is suspected to be the Blade of an Avatar. Now everyone wants the blade and to find out what power it holds.

First let’s talk about the characters. They sound like video game characters almost all of the time. All of them are either super witty and have a comeback for everything like Captain Bennis, overly dramatic and ominous, or very one dimensional only there to move the plot along. But they’re enjoyable enough and there is enough character development to make you kind of care about Captain Bennis at least.

Now when I started reading this I wondered why they got the book traditionally published besides the fact that they could. It was originally an e-book for backers of Shroud of the Avatar. But what was the appeal for mass market, maybe some more advertising? I wondered if it would hold up with other fantasy novels and I think it did. It’s a par for the course as far as fantasy writing and plot lines go. In the back drop, the Obsidian Army is trying to civilize the world through law and order while the rest of the countries form a coalition to oppose them. At its core its the story of Captain Bennis coming to terms with whether or not he still believes in the Obsidian Cause.

For a 300 page fantasy novel, it does a good job at introducing some of the world. Though it feels kind of like Destiny’s story. There’s just enough lore and information to move the plot along but the deeper stuff you have to go outside of the game/book to look for. They keep talking about the Fall and everyone in the book seems to know what it was but its never explained I thought it was interesting that elves, ogers, fauns and other fantasy creatures were actually ,magically shaped from living humans by the Obsidians.

It actually made me a little more interested in the game itself. It was fun reading about places and thinking if I could play the game and go to those same places. While I didn’t think this was a fantastic book I’m looking forward to reading the next installment.

Ready Player One is So Pay to Win

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I just finished this book/auidio book a few days ago. I’ve been hearing for years that its one of the best video game novels ever. It’s some of my friends favorite book of all time.

After the death of the creator of the Oasis the world’s most popular game, he leaves a video will. It announces a competition to find an egg in the Oasis, the first player to do this gets to own the company and inherits all of  it’s wealth. It follows Wade Watts in his quest to solve the riddles to find the egg.

It’s set in a distopian future where the real world is energy starved, most of it’s a barren wasteland, and outside of major cities people live in trailers stacked up like high rises. But it’s ok because no one has to worry about the planet when basically everyone is playing in the Oasis, a virtual reality Second Life with hundreds of planets. It started out as an MMO and then grew to replace the internet. It’s a platform to conduct business, children go to virtual public schools, and is also a game though most people don’t play it as such.

The Oasis is free to play and  it’s also totally pay to win. You can transfer real money to get credits that allow you to buy items, armor, transportation, anything you might actually need to play the game. In fact you can’t even get off the starter tutorial planet without paying a transport fee. For most people this isn’t a problem as they don’t  play the actual game. If you did you better pony up the dough so you can go to a planet where you might be able to kill things for experience and if your lucky some items you can sell for some credits to transport somewhere else. Everything has a money sink, ships need to be refueled and repaired, weapons and armor break, and let’s not forget the auction house where you can buy some of the rarest artifacts as long as you have the cash.

It’s a good book, and the audiobook  narration by Will Wheaton was fantastic. It was a little weird hearing Will Wheaton narrate the parts about Will Wheaton or the whole sector of the Oasis called the Wheatonverse. I wouldn’t say it’s blew me away but it was set in a very interesting world.

I have to give it credit, the book manages to talk about video games without being cringey. A lot of times books will try to incorporate video games and they just don’t come out well in print. I also learned a lot about video game history and the 80’s reading this book, I don’t know how much of it is true but it all sounded accurate enough.

My one big gripe with the story is that it took 5 years to solve the first clue to find the egg. Thousands of players trying to figure it out and it took 5 years. The next clues only take a couple months each to solve apparently and they’re more obscure than the first. The other problem I had with the book is that the love interest feels forced. It’s like the book was written and then someone said, you know this is a story about a teenage boy and teenage boys are always motivated by chasing teenage girls around. The whole time she’s not even that interested in him and he just obsesses over her.

If you have read Ready Player One and are looking for a similar book, I highly recommend Omnitopia by Diane Duane. It looks like the rest of the series never took off but the first book is a really good read and is also set in an MMO.