Rating: WARTY!
I've been a big fan of Duane's ever since I read So You Want to be a Wizard? many years ago. This book I am sorry to report is not up to the same standard. The subject matter of this kind of a novel is really a bit of a tired topic at this point: social networks gone bad, MMORPGs, and that sort of thing, and you really need to bring something strong and new to it to get a good story, and while this one isn't lousy, it really isn't a great entertainment either. i read this some time ago and I cannot for the life of me recall what the content was in any detail, which speaks volumes about how little of an impressionism this made on me when I read it.
The author seems so enamored of the idea of MMPORGs that she spends far too much time delving into the game and its technology than in actually telling a truly interesting and engrossing story. it seems to me she should have let this stew for a while before writing it. The impression I had was that she'd just learned about these games, maybe played one or two and become entranced by them, and immediately decided to write a novel about one. She went into endless detail about the game, and all this served to do was to make her 'real life' characters seems flat, one dimension, and uninteresting. It was boring. I can't commend it at all.
