Damnit, trapped in another GameLit/LitRPG trend.
Here it's the relatively near future (far enough away for full immersion VR to be built in a headset, but close enough for class warfare and public schools to still be full of discrimination). And the most anticipated use of the VR sets? Awaken Online, the world's newest and most engrossing fantasy MMORPG, naturally powered by an AI.
Jason has a problem, in that in the discrimination ladder, he's at the bottom, and Alex, his bully, is at the top. The top of the richness ladder, the top of the social ladder, and the top of the Awaken Online ladder, having managed to sneak into the beta and power-leveled to become the most powerful player in the game.
Which means that when Jason finds himself expelled from school on the release date of Awaken Online, suddenly finding himself with a lot of free time to play the game, he has a long way to go to catch up. Alex (or Alexxion as his character) is attempting to take over the city that Jason started in, and this throws them into conflict. At the same time, Jason is aware how involved Alex was in his expulsion and this drives him to screw Alex over.
And so we get the first player character I've seen in this genre that has an "evil" bent. Jason jumps into being a dark mage, summoning the undead and so on, and sneakily murdering his way through a city.
This all advances through three different plotlines. The first is the game, a fairly traditional GameLit environment with the usual leveling and stats, but a certain amount of flexibility driven by the controlling AI, designed to give the greatest fun to the players. The second plotline is the collapse of Jason's personal life, and what he's doing to cope with it. And the third is the backstory of the AI development, through the eyes of its coders during the beta test.
I was impressed by the attempted scope of this, with it diving into some of the possible ethic concerns of AIs reading your brain and attempting to give people a fun time.
The main central conflict is a bit simple, with the motivations of hero and antagonist being rather basic, but there's enough going on in the game world that it's not a problem. Jason's advancement in the game is fairly interesting (though I still felt slightly overwhelmed by stats) but there's a nice shift at the midpoint to a more strategic phase, which I've not seen much of before.
Listened to the audiobook version, which I think might allow the book to get away with some plotting issues, but I'm definitely tempted to try the next in the series. Also helped along by the sarcastic cat.
Tagged: Book GameLit Fantasy world Novel Audio