Pandabearbooks

4,5 stars

I ended up enjoying this a lot more than I expected. I skimmed a one star review before starting in on the sample and kept waiting for this to be rubbish, but I really loved it. It's a sweet romance between two different types of nerds. It's about accepting both yourself as well as others, and it's about not putting so much stock in other peoples views and opinions, assumed or otherwise.

The book is half prose, half game chat, and I really like that. I don't know what it is about IM formatted books but I've really been feeling them recently.

I also think that I know a perfect amount about MMOs to enjoy this book. That is to say, I've played enough (and more so,now enough people who play) that I understood the lingo and easily kept up with that was happening in game, but I don't really play MMOs myself, so none of it felt fake either. (I can't say how this would have read to an actual gamer, but I sure enjoyed it.)

The side characters were quite a diverse bunch, and I'd really enjoy reading about them in their own right. I found the main characters relatable enough, Kit more so than Drew. I also very much enjoyed the commentary on online relationships, having spent a big part of my teens chatting with people on MSN messenger.

I also thought that the book was written pretty well. It read effortlessly, and I found it easy to buy the voice of the 19-year old male narrator. I'm glad the author hadn't attempted to make the prose unnecessarily pretty, because I don't feel like it would have fit the story.

For some inexplicable reason, this made me want to play Dragon Age: Origins again, so I might just go and get the download started.