Overview
"Once upon a time, there were four of them. And though each was good at a number of things, all of them were very good at games." "Dagmar is a game designer trapped in Jakarta in the middle of a revolution. The city is tearing itself apart around her, and she needs to get out. Her boss Charlie has his own problems - 4.3 billion of them, to be precise, hidden in an offshore account." "Austin is the businessman - the VC. He's the one with the plan and the one to keep the geeks in line. BJ was there from the start, but while Charlie's star rose, BJ sank into the depths of customer service. He pads his hours at the call center slaying online orcs, stealing your loot, and selling it on the Internet." When one of the four is gunned down in a parking lot, the survivors become players in a very different kind of game. Caught between the dangerous worlds of the Russian Mafia and international finance, Dagmar must draw on all her resources - not least millions of online gamers - to track down the killer.Synopsis
IMAGINE A GAME WITH NO BOUNDARIES - WAITING IN A PARKING LOT, SITTING AT YOUR COMPUTER, WALKING DOWN THE STREET. YOU COULD BE CALLED AT ANY MOMENT - AND YOU'D BETTER BE READY.
THIS IS NOT A GAME.
THIS IS A NOVEL OF GREED, BETRAYAL, AND SOCIAL NETWORKING.
Publishers Weekly
Williams (The Rift ) weaves intriguing questions about games, gamers and their relationships with real life into this well-paced near-future thriller. Game designer Dagmar specializes in creating "alternate reality" games that muddle the line between fantasy and reality. Trapped in riot-torn Jakarta, she reaches out to the gamer community for help. Once back in Los Angeles, Dagmar is caught up in a web of murders and financial manipulation that she begins to blend into her latest game, using the community of players to solve clues and sift through large amounts of data. The line between real life and the game blurs as the action builds to a satisfying and thoughtful conclusion. Though the technology talk occasionally becomes intrusive, it's convincingly written; the characters are realistic and absorbing, and the story deeply compelling. (Mar.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.Editorials
Publishers Weekly
Williams (The Rift ) weaves intriguing questions about games, gamers and their relationships with real life into this well-paced near-future thriller. Game designer Dagmar specializes in creating "alternate reality" games that muddle the line between fantasy and reality. Trapped in riot-torn Jakarta, she reaches out to the gamer community for help. Once back in Los Angeles, Dagmar is caught up in a web of murders and financial manipulation that she begins to blend into her latest game, using the community of players to solve clues and sift through large amounts of data. The line between real life and the game blurs as the action builds to a satisfying and thoughtful conclusion. Though the technology talk occasionally becomes intrusive, it's convincingly written; the characters are realistic and absorbing, and the story deeply compelling. (Mar.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.Library Journal
College friends united by their love of online games make their passion a successful business, until a currency crash and government coup strand one of them in a foreign country-and their alternate reality games suddenly blur the boundaries between the real and virtual worlds, threatening real fortunes and real lives. Along with William Gibson (Neuromancer) and Bruce Sterling (Schismatrix), Williams (Voice of the Whirlwind) helped create the cyberpunk fiction movement of the late 20th century. Now, he moves beyond cyberpunk into an even nearer future, with all-too-real technologies and all-too-believable possibilities. Sharply drawn characters and sizzling prose make Williams's latest novel essential for all sf collections.
—Jackie Cassada