GeekPrime recently introduced you – and me – to his favorite way to spend money at Cons – the Small Press Area. Being a wonderfully sharing person, he brought me to Small Press with him when we were at WonderCon 2013. And yes, there is a lot of amazing art there. There are also BOOKS. Did I mention that I’m a voracious reader? We picked up several children’s books and then a booth with this as a giant backdrop caught my eye:
We meandered over and the friendly and vivacious lady at the booth introduced herself and her book. She explained that as someone who’d gone from non-gamer sort of watching friends play to a gamer herself, she wrote this story to help bridge the gap between non-gamers and gamers. I was fascinated – and probably got a little geeky fan girl :P. As an avid reader, meeting a real live author – who wrote a book that looked and sounded really interesting – was as exciting to me as meeting a really popular singer (I’d put a name in here, but really don’t know who’s hot right now) would probably be for normal people ;). So we chatted – she mentioned Felicia Day (now that name I know!) had endorsed the book – and then Geekprime bought it for me (cause he knew I REALLY wanted it by then). Then I (slowly – did I mention how much I enjoyed this amazing and friendly author?) moved on to the rest of the Con and home. When I finally started reading the book at home, I discovered what Genese Davis had failed to mention: that it should come with a warning label saying “do not start reading this book if you have deadlines to meet in the next few days.” Seriously, I could hardly put it down. And we won’t discuss my deadlines that week.
Anyways. I really really really hate spoilers, so don’t want to say much about the actual story and risk spoiling for anyone else. However, Genese Davis’ website has a really neat little trailer that I think does a good job of capturing the essence without giving anything away:
I do want to make one thing clear though: I really don’t think this book is just for gamers. I think it could help non-gamers understand the appeal of MMORPGs and gaming communities and the good that can come from them. I also need to mention that the writing is fabulous and the gorgeous descriptions and smooth flow of the action make it easy to see this book becoming a movie someday. I also really appreciate the fact that – despite a college and gaming setting – the author did not feel the need to use gratuitous sex scenes or lots of foul language. Instead she provides a beautiful example of the fact that a brilliant story told by someone with a good vocabulary has no use for such lowbrow tactics. So enough from me – go read the book already, then come back and let us know what you thought of it.
