Part time period fiction and part story on life and relationships. While most reasonable person would not call a book based in late 1990’s to 2011 as period fiction, this book’s characters are video game designers and by video game standards this most certainly fits the description of period fiction.
There is no central plot except that the story revolves around 2 friends who grow through the years, make video games, and make a mess of their relationships and those around them and create bonds that are unbreakable.
There’s humor, warmth, success, failures, tragedy, and loss woven through the pages just as in real life. There are many big themes present in the book but I personally wouldn’t want to rob someone of uncovering their own by explaining what spoke to me in this book.
For those looking for a plot and a tidy conclusion, you will be disappointed. If you’re wanting a story of life and how we are influenced by our environment and those around us as we grow older, how big and small events, our relationships, our insecurities, our fears, and failures shape us and chip away at us and slowly makes us who we are, well this is the book for you.
The only negative for me was the whiplash in the second half of the book when the author changes to first person narrative and back and then plunges you into a weird perspective of being a character in a game that is aware that they are a character in a game.