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Wow. And, unfortunately, I don't mean that in a good way. To say I was disappointed is quite the understatement.

This is the third of Matt Ruff's novels that I've read, and this one was by far the worst. It was so dreadfully bad that I'd have written this guy off as an incel, libertarian hack had this been my first. So, if you're reading this and have never read Ruff before, please try something else first!

As for the content of the book, about 90% of it is just describing playing various games. The other 10% is a very loose narrative with a poor, unoriginal story. Others have pointed out the language used. In my opinion, some of it is over the top and unnecessary. It's clear the author pulled his punches in some spots but then just straight drops a racial slur. All of the sexual content seemed to have been written by a 14 year old too. Just blah all around.,

Tl;dr version - incel Ready Player One, read something else by him

This isn't my jam- I don't like cyberpunk, and I've never dabbled in LitRPG.

HOWEVER.

This was great. A ton of interesting twists and turns, and a satisfying ending. A protagonist I liked and was interested in.

If you stumbled across this book in the 99-cent self-published section of the Kindle store, you'd say, “Hey, that wasn't bad.” BUT... if Lovecraft Country and Sewer, Gas, & Electric are among your favorite books, you'd say, “C'mon Ruff! You are so much better that this.” My current theory is that he wrote this in order to make his Oculus, PlayStation, Xbox, and PC tax-deductible. You know. Research.