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For a moment there, this book fooled me. The premise was captivating and I can hardly resist a story which uses video games and their industry as a background.

The writing is often confusing and convoluted especially in some of the transitions. The only time where the text flowed was when the author went on a description rampage. About that...

This is where we can notice the author background working in the video game industry. He really knows how to describe all the scenarios and character equipment. However, they do not appear to contribute much to the overall history of the book. I've often thought of them as notes in a game development document or as side notes in a theater piece where you need to address all the items in the scenario. I love world setting and descriptions but these just felt boring and unnecessary.

Of course, only the writer can know what he was trying to pass along with his story, but I honestly feel that the story conclusion and moral as it is could be easily accomplishable with less 100-150 pages than what the book has.

For example the complete section about Solar Empires is so unnecessary. Did he really need to explain what happened in-ALL-THE-GAMES... Basically, these games were used only as a plot device to, in the end, come back to the Endorian continent again.

In these almost 400 pages, I couldn't find real character development, the introverted genius died as an introverted genius. The charismatic/successful character remained as so. The smart/misunderstood one didn't even made an effort. Finally, the ordinary/”imaginative” one that seems to have a dinner for two with an imaginary character in a restaurant (just, how did this happen? Nobody at the restaurant thought it was weird?), just kept being so.

I kept reading in expectation for a good ending and sadly, in this chapter the book also falls short. It just goes the philosophical route in a paragraph or two offering a cliché and very very anticlimactic ending.

For example, what happened after the game was released? We know that WAFFLE became shareware and Black Arts was shut down, but for a book that gave almost as much focus to Mournblade as it gave to the game release pipeline, it's odd that we don't get any real metrics in the game release.

I guess that what I really take from the book were the parts of the story that reflected more in the day to day job of a video game company and the hacker/do it yourself culture that spawns from the characters since they were kids.

People looking for a Ready Player One experience, won't find it in this book. It riffs many times on nostalgia, but the story and the writing are hardly on par from what we've seen from Ernest Cline.