Despite my 3-star rating, I don't think this is a bad book. It just didn't make it to a 4-star book for me, unfortunately, because too much bugged me.

First off, I want to say that I think this book is important due to the discussions it brings to the table, and the space it creates for Black readers and gamers to discuss their experiences in both communities. Obviously this book isn't meant for me in this specific aspect, but it does force white and other non-Black readers to pay attention to aspects of the media they consume that they might not have otherwise, specifically character customization options in popular games and media (as this is definitely an issue in the Picrew trend as well). I feel like this book is good for the audience it's aimed for as well, and is a good way to bring diverse issues to YA readers, and if I were a teacher, I would choose to have this book on my classroom's bookshelf in a heartbeat. There were just a lot of important discussions going on, and sometimes too many points can make a book feel muddled, but I feel like Morris gave enough space to each issue to make a reader understand them instead of feel overwhelmed, even if they're coming from a place of ignorance. This story tackles discussions from the token Black friend to slurs used online, stereotypical & harmful representations of darker-skinned characters in fantasy/sci-fi video games to the untrue idea of Blackness as a monolith. Overall, this aspect of the story was really well done.

My main issue just comes from how unbelievable the pretense of the story was. Our main character, Kiera, was somehow able to code an entire, realistic MMO VR game with hundreds of thousands of players in a few years, with little experience coding/designing games beforehand. It'd be one thing if the world felt a bit more sci-fi/futuristic, but since the story is so set in our current political climate and our society today, it was harder to suspend disbelief that this single person (with some outside help) would be able to do a project of this scale. I mean, World of Warcraft is run by a huge team, and even that doesn't look as good as this game was supposed to. It just made me cringe whenever the MC mentioned the 'how' behind the game, as it just felt out there, and it took me out of the story. (Another small issue I had was the fact that there were moments where a large portion of the player-base was online and active when honestly... a lot of these huge games have so many dead accounts that have 20% of all registered accounts online is absurd, and there were moments where that number was said to be way larger). I also felt the game was overly complicated, which took away from the story at times. There seems to be this whole MMO grinding aspect alongside the actual dueling card game concept, but it felt underexplored, which led to it being more confusing to the reader instead of adding to the game as a concept. Like, players had houses and lived in villages and worked different jobs based on the region they called home, but this was never explained enough to fully understand how that all works (and just makes me question the economy and basis of the game more). I feel like more focus could've been given to the card game instead, and that not only would've made the game easier to explain and picture to the reader, but also may have seemed more feasible for a single teenager to design, code, and create on their own.

Overall, I feel torn on this book because while I really enjoyed the new perspectives it brought me on the discussions I mentioned above, I just didn't enjoy some aspects because of the issues I had with the gaming/game-making aspects of it. I do still recommend it for what it did well, but to be mindful of what it didn't.