A fun story that gets more granular than Ford V Ferrari. What a bunch of true characters. Some of my favourite lines from the movie are actual stuff they said. It’s nice to get more history around the characters and the companies, plus more gearhead stats on the cars themselves.

It’s fast paced and a page turner. People say if you aren’t into cars than people wouldn’t enjoy it but I think the overarching story is compelling and indicative of capitalism and that America time period. Young men literally killing themselves to go faster. It reads like some sort of twisted ritual to Mammon, as stories around improving technology in modern capitalism too often do.

While being wildly contrived in the past, it’s true that it’s all just made up anyways. I recently finished The Once and Future King and so many stupid, bat-shit crazy things happen, sometimes White just breaks the fourth wall to say like who knows this doesn’t make sense, just roll with it. (Though I think some of the contrivances are internal consistencies that nagged me sometimes.)

What boosted it up to a 4 star is some pretty damn cool subversions near the end, and if that hadn’t clinched it, I think Nimue would have.

TLDR: It’s a fun, weird, wild, inclusive read.

Strange. Didn’t think I’d read this but as soon as I began the audiobook I knew the story very well, even the introduction. But for years I thought I need to get this still because people say it’s so good. Hah. So weird.

The movie is one of my favourites. It is really interesting getting into the characters head, as I hoped, because there are so many nuances acting can get across only so much. The plot seemed, from what I remember, almost exactly the same as the movie; it’s been some time but I am pretty sure the dialogue is close to verbatim.

I wonder what the impact would have been like had I read the book first though. You only get one ending, if they are the same. In this case the movie soaked up my emotional responses, mostly. Thoroughly enjoyable to read, especially for the prose.

I DNF’d at about 70%. It’s YA but even still once the Artemis’s plot begins to unfold it felt overlong and when the author gets hyperbolic with similes they don’t even make sense? Like measurements of time being likened to speed and retcons established fiction for something fun technological in nature. Had the actual plan/premise/conceit been more interesting I’d have probably not been bothered by such things but as is i just kept waiting for something interesting and gave up.

While not diverging too much from a frenetically paced cyberpunk action thriller, focusing on a black woman character, specifically in gaming is particularly bold, interesting, and new.

Essentially a group of women who are at the top of the main gaming platform, which uses 1-to-1 tech from player to character (meaning whatever they can physically do is translated to the game, so they have to be actually athletic and build real twitch reflexes, etc.), uncover a plan where a tech giant develop a headset that’ll takeover the gamer’s mind completely and weaponize them in the real while they think they’re just playing the game. They gotta save the world IRL by using the skills the developed in the game.

What really stood out was raising awareness in a no nonsense way regarding the bullying of women in gaming today, and how society as a whole perpetuates this particular kind of abuse. I think using cyberpunk for this is absolutely genius.

It mostly pulls off a fun plot; sometimes it’s a bit of an eye roll but the character work and personal relationships/history is better than expected all ‘round and the action sequences are pretty fun, I have to say. There’s a lot of jargon that might alienate people. Stuff from cyberpunk vernacular as well as various online gaming stuff and technology. As you might have guessed from the game there’s some problematic areas in the setting concerning orientalism. Kind of weird that Otaku, which I’ve only heard of in terms of like someone who watches a lot of anime, is applied to gamers? And there’s a bunch of other sort of typical CP setting stuff that can’t let go of Asian cultural elements that seem to be mostly aesthetic.

Exceeded expectations so 4 stars~

What a ride. It would have been interesting if it had more literary themes as I first suspected it might. The notion that maneuvering through the world is a process that constantly obliterates our previous selves has always been something incredibly enticing to me. When literalized, I’m not sure it’s as interesting even though it is undeniably fun and mind bending?

Simile game: strong.
I really enjoyed this. Well written and extremely evocative. In terms of a portal story, it probably is fairly stock? but the prose are compelling enough to propel it along so it never felt like a slog. Had it been a bit more divergent in terms of stakes and “villain” it would have been a 5 star book.

The audiobook narration is —Fantastic— highly recommend consuming the book in that format.