So I was stuck wandering around my local library last week, looking for a book to start reading. Now our library is new, but it’s not chock full of SF which is what I was looking for. Plus, all the fiction is shelved together, not by genre. I was just about to give up and lose the reading habit for a few days, when I trolled the W’s. Walter Jon Williams This Is Not A Game caught my eye, remembrances of an io9 review surfacing. So I grabbed the book and checked it out.
This Is Not A Game turned out to be pretty good. I didn’t find it particularly deep but it was a well written, easy to read, bit of near team speculative fiction. The plot focuses on the bleed between Alternate Reality Games and the real world, wrapped around a murder mystery. As Paul Raven pointed out the book could easily be classified as a technothriller. I particularly sympathize with Raven’s expectations of a big reveal at the end. I was waiting for one as well. A reveal that never arrived.
My only major problem was with Dagmar’s, the main character, walk moment. At a certain point she has to make a decision to meet her bosses crazy demands or quit her job. Previously she had been made out as fairly wealthy if not quite rich, drafting off of her successful college chums. Yet at decision time Dagmar mumbles something about needing the money. This bugged me the rest of the book, especially since she didn’t seem to have any real financial commitments. No mortgage, well past college loans, no child support, no extravagant LA lifestyle. Plus there were plenty of other rationalizations she could have come up with. Just a minor glitch though.
And Williams overdid it a bit with the “Harlem Nocturne” ringtone mentions.
In any event, worth a library loan or a paperback pickup, whenever it makes it to paperback.