88 Names is about an MMORPG sherpa, John Chu. He and his team help gamer tourists through exciting boss battles and virtual adventures, for a fee. When they get a bizarre new client, with no virtual footprint and way too much cash, John can’t help investigating, and the nerd mystery takes us everywhere from North Korea to text-based muds.
What if there was the virtual world adventure of Ready Player One, but when there’s a nerd culture reference it’s actually used as a gatekeeping reference, and not as the basis of the entire plot? I mean, I loved Ready Player One, but I’ve also met a lot of gamers who act like pop culture trivia is the same thing as a personality, so…
The villains in 88 Names are believable and dark, and the gamesworld feel familiar enough without feeling like knockoffs. (I skimmed a bit of the virtual space battle part — the author has accurately captured how boring I find both Eve Online and internet edgelords).
I sort of knew, after reading Bad Monkeys, that there was going to be a double or triple cross, and virtual-friend-has-a-RL-secret is a given in any virtual world adventure story, but I could not predict the ending in any way. Each time there was a new reveal, I thought WHAT?!?!? Oh, right… there was definitely a hint about that earlier and that’s the absolute best way to feel about a reveal.
I’ve had a bunch of one-sitting reads in the pandemic, so it’s not quite the stunning endorsement that it would be in other, non-quarantined years, but still. One-sitting read.
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