You

Austin Grossman has a new novel out. It just hit last week, and it's called YOU. YOU is what would happen if Ready Player One and Fight Club had a baby while making an Ultima game. If you've read both of those (or watched the movie, in Fight Club's case) and liked them, do not pass go, do not go to your cave and find your power animal, buy this book and read it. YOU is a book about making computer games, about making the Ultimate Game, a game where you could be anyone and do anything and the world would still work, the story would still unfold completely naturally. Austin has worked as a writer and designer on some of my favorite games, including Deus Ex and Thief: Deadly Shadows. His experience in the games industry really shows, and you can see bits of real games peaking through the imaginary ones. There's a section in the book about a demo at E3, and it sounds exactly like they're playing Thief, scrambling over rooftops, firing flaming arrows at torches, evading the city watch. Austin's latest game is Dishonored, which is sitting on my shelf, and has now risen much higher in the next-to-be-played list. The story of YOU is told through a prodigal protagonist. Out of options, he returns to the game company his friends started after high school, after they all built a pair of RPGs together. He gets a job as an entry level game designer, and proceeds to unravel a mystery about friendship and adolescence and being a nerd. The game shifts between its present day of 1997 and the 80's years of high school, the story unfolding through flashbacks and dives into the games the company created. If you read REAMDE and enjoyed the parts in the MMO, or if you enjoyed Daemon, or Ready Player One, or Tad William's Otherland books, you'll like this book. It's obvious he's writing from experience when he introduces a game, and while some of the details may be embellished from what was possible then, they play like we want to remember them. The ending of this book doesn't land as well as it could, it doesn't leave you with a particularly warm sense of accomplishment, but it isn't bad. The macguffin is resolved, but the mystery sort of petters out. This isn't a book you read for the ending, though, it's a book you read for the journey, for the time warp back into high school, into games on floppy discs and BBSes and a million possibilities inside the magical machine that no one over the age of 25 understands. As an ode to that bygone era, it is unmatched.

First off, I'm being unfair, I'm comparing this to 'Soon I Will Be Invincible', but listen, or rather read on, I pre ordered this, at full price, so someone had my money for a couple months and I'm a little peeved about the $0.0017 in interest I would have earned. What 'Prep' by Curtiss Sittenfeld is to boarding school novels, 'You' is to the video game culture and industry. Like 'Prep' the writing in 'You' is beautiful and powerful. If you didn't play video games or did play video games (read comic books, grew up with a Star Wars Fan Club card in your nylon two fold velco wallet, double or triple tapped Superman showings in one day, etc. etc.) you will understand and find the scenes and descriptions of the times poignant and moving. Grossman, like Sittenfeld, but in his own right of course, is a wonderful writer and there are those pages and passages you will say, "Hey, man, get out of my head/childhood". But, ... the immersion into the main character's life, day dreams, and hallucinations lose coherency, fascinating vistas are glimpsed, and never revisited or elaborated on. To put it in context, it's interesting that Michael Moorcock's character Elric, or more accurately, the brother sword (Mournblade) to Elric's sword (Stormbringer) features so prominently in the novel. In the Elric novels, somewhere, probably between 'The Weird of the White Wolf' and 'The Bane of the Black Sword', even the fantasy adherent loses track of what it is these books are about and reads on only to see what next duel or piece of intrigue or sorcery comes along because the reader has lost all connection to the plot and the characters. It's not a totally bad thing, you're not bored, you just read on, snaking the remote optics down the rabbit hole but not going down because, well, that would be too much work. For anyone who dabbled, delved, wadded gingerly, or dove deep into all things geek will love the references and the nostalgic (or current)feeling of those mental forays and campaigns into other worlds. Personally I never got into video games, I played lots of Avalon Hill board games with my brother (who amongst us didn't have Regatta, play it once, then turn it into a map for all sorts of naval battles. I still have a complete 'The Creature that ate Shebogan', which my kids enjoy to this day as a demented Monopoly) and when the digital age dawned I just stuck with comics, novels , and movies, but I will attest that Grossman writes the emotional aspects of certain scenes that I very much understand the gamer world and worldview. More buts. . .Going back to the 'Prep' comparison, I will say I rooted for Lee (the main character) in a way I couldn't root for Russell. There were times where Russel's voice is lost and a beautiful, very literary, scene or description simply dead ends or just fades away. You want more Lisa, and more complete understanding of Simon's death, not just as how one or two other people related to it. The hallucinatory aspects lose coherence and could be distracting to the uninitiated in the culture, there is little to tie them together (IMGO) with the overall narrative. Russell's voice, always coming in and out of focus, gets lost in the last quarter of the book. It is lost to a tone that resembles a Wired or Vanity Fair article, an interesting Wired or Vanity Fair article but at some point you don't care about Russell, because he is really not there anymore. Sorry, can't give it more than 3 stars. It's a good book, if you want a trip into that culture, and almost as an extreme long article about that culture, it's very good. As a story, a narrative, a character piece, it's on the weak side of good, and towards the end, again, reads like an article about the genre/time. I'm a fan, so like most, I'm waiting for the equal of 'Soon I Will Be Invincible', and I will wait through whatever ages of the realm I have to.

I like the way it melds the fantasy online with real world story. Its certainly worth a read if you like classic rpgs (Ultima,Baldurs gate,etc) and are interested in what goes into making them.

This is my first review in ages on amazon, but after reading this book i felt like i have to warn my fellow readers. I had hy hopes, as i saw this book being compared to ready player one a lot. I have no idea how anybody could come up with such a comparison. You feels like the very first and very rough draft of a book. As the author loves to put exhaustive lists in his book, i will follow his lead and co pose my review of a list of things i disliked about this book: - all the lists, that just add to the lenght of the book. My favorite: a list about every item that could probably exist in a fantasy rpg - very confusing timelines - jumps between the timelines, without any indication when you are at the moment. And i felt like the timeline just doesnt make sense what so ever, or was really flawed. I didnt bother to check - incoherent characters, that change their behavior like underwear, not to speak of their motivations - a highly unlikeable hero - an almost non existant plot, stuffed to the brim with filler material - plot hooks that are abandoned all the time, while the most uninteresting part in described in great detail - descriptions of descriptions of fictional videogames with a story as shallow as the book - with lots of list of places - that arent even interesting or original

The story grips you and doesn't quite go where you expect. Gives a great insight into a massive industry which is still struggling between it's back bedroom roots and corporate manouverings. It also provides an interesting take on generic fantasy, sci-fi and gaming tropes, with the foundation of quite a good fantasy story in it's own right, mixed in with the (possibly) real world mental implications of high pressure jobs with harsh deadlines. The only criticism is that it ends a bit like real life, mostly a "What now? Is that it?" feeling, rather than a nice story book ending.

Man hätte es sich denken können falls man "Soon I will be invincible" gelesen hat. War die Art des Erinnerungs-Erzählens beim letzten Buch noch recht neuartig und ungewöhnlich fürs Genre, kommt es bei diesem Buch überhaupt nicht gut an. Falls ihr euch fragt was ich damit meine; Austin Grossman schreibt anscheinend gerne Erinnerungen der Charaktere, was sinnvoll ist um den Helden etwas Tiefe zu geben, aber absolut sinnfrei ist in diesen Ausmaßen wie sie in "You" vorkommen. Es wird wirklich unglaublich viel Zeit in der Vergangenheit verbracht, eigentliche Handlung gibt es ehrlich gesagt wenig. Das wenige was in der Gegenwart spielt ist recht unspannend und ließt sich mehr wie ein Insiderbericht der PC Games über Spieleprogrammierer, wirkliche Handlung die diese Bezeichnung auch verdient kommt sehr schleppend auf... Muss gestehen dass ich es nicht fertig gelesen habe, es war einfach zuuuu langatmig. Wenn man sich die Rezensionen über dieses Buch durchließt kommt man grob auf 2 Schlussfolgerungen: -Hat man selbst die Zeit der ersten Computerspiele erlebt und möchte sie nochmals durchleben bzw. interessiert sich für die Anfänge dann bitte, kauft es. -Möchte man ein Sci-Fi/Fantasy Buch eines doch sehr gelobten Autors lesen dann FINGER WEG! Es ist viel zu teuer, selbst als E-Book, die magere Story rechtfertigt nicht den Preis! Besser man greift zu Drew Hayes etc.

Am half way through readin this and loving it. Some great references to old games etc and lots of info if you are interested in the whole software or gaming process and what goes on behind the scenes.