This review was originally posted at Goodreads and imported here later with next to no spell/grammar checking.

3/5 stars

I am a bit conflicted about this book.

It starts as a knock-off of Daemon: a guy creates a virtual world, gets filthy rich, secluded and mysterious. When he dies way too young, it turns out he’s secretly set a bunch of stuff in motion involving the virtual and real worlds alike. In the meantime, the real world is slowly crumbling. And honestly, Daemon did that premise much better.

And then it morphs into a ride of the 80s culture references, computer games and movies. Which Scott Pilgrim did a million times better.

But what remains is still a lot of fun.

There’s lot to criticise there — the book lacks any subtlety, everyone in it is black or white, the villains can’t possibly be more cartooney, the cultural references are wayyyy overused and start wearing thin really quickly. But it’s also a cool mystery and I ended up enjoying it much more than I expected after the rocky start.

Oh and the audiobook is narrated by Wil Wheaton, who’s:

1. a great narrator in general
2. absolutely positively the best person for this project

by Tomas Sedovic on 13th July, 2018