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A review by the_resa_p
The N00b Warriors by Scott Douglas
2.0
In a world where boys are sent off to fight in a man’s war, the only thing more absurd is why they’re fighting.
Douglas has set up a story line with the potential to be fantastic. Video games bleeding into real life, a war started over blog posts, the government buying into video game companies and supporting capitalism. All of it sounds like if you mixed it together you’d get a fantastic read. Unfortunately this endearingly absurd plot gave way to the downright bizarre and confusing. Dylan, our “hero”, does nothing to gain your sympathies and he doesn’t seem to have any personality at all. The dialogue doesn’t flow and most of the descriptions are clunky at best. The flow improves towards the end of the book, but it’s too little too late. The war is the central plot point, but it’s far from the video game experience described in the summary. The descriptions a reminiscent of “All Quiet On the Western Front”, with almost total trench warfare and low tech weapons. In a world supposedly controlled by video game companies, where every child is issued a PSP, it seems odd there aren’t any high tech or radio controlled weapons. The enemy seems to change almost constantly. What is described as a “civil war”, ends up having an opposing side comprised what changes from Canadians, to French-Canadians, to just The French, to people who look “vaguely middle eastern”. Nowhere is it discussed that the Coco Puffs are Americans just like the Frosted Flakes. The plot does pick up after the discovery of the golden Wii, but then is quickly bogged down by paragraphs of description that are hard to slog through. It’s hard to tell if Douglas is trying to be political with this book or just funny, either way it falls short of the mark.
There is apparently a graphic novel version of this book out as well, and that may be a much better read than the text version. The plot lends itself to a graphic novel much better than a book
Douglas has set up a story line with the potential to be fantastic. Video games bleeding into real life, a war started over blog posts, the government buying into video game companies and supporting capitalism. All of it sounds like if you mixed it together you’d get a fantastic read. Unfortunately this endearingly absurd plot gave way to the downright bizarre and confusing. Dylan, our “hero”, does nothing to gain your sympathies and he doesn’t seem to have any personality at all. The dialogue doesn’t flow and most of the descriptions are clunky at best. The flow improves towards the end of the book, but it’s too little too late. The war is the central plot point, but it’s far from the video game experience described in the summary. The descriptions a reminiscent of “All Quiet On the Western Front”, with almost total trench warfare and low tech weapons. In a world supposedly controlled by video game companies, where every child is issued a PSP, it seems odd there aren’t any high tech or radio controlled weapons. The enemy seems to change almost constantly. What is described as a “civil war”, ends up having an opposing side comprised what changes from Canadians, to French-Canadians, to just The French, to people who look “vaguely middle eastern”. Nowhere is it discussed that the Coco Puffs are Americans just like the Frosted Flakes. The plot does pick up after the discovery of the golden Wii, but then is quickly bogged down by paragraphs of description that are hard to slog through. It’s hard to tell if Douglas is trying to be political with this book or just funny, either way it falls short of the mark.
There is apparently a graphic novel version of this book out as well, and that may be a much better read than the text version. The plot lends itself to a graphic novel much better than a book