https://www.indiebound.org/book/9780593321201

This book is about dysfunctional kids who become friends and grow up to be dysfunctional adults who make wildly successful video games together.

That’s it; nothing else really happens, except life, with all its horrible and wonderful ups and downs. The book doesn’t even really an ending; it just….stops.

I thought this book was really boring and had two really dislikeable protagonists. The prose was fine but uninspired. There was some deeper meaning that was kind of nice in places, but that can be found with more pleasant characters and with more lyrical writing. For some reason, this book felt like The Magicians to me. There aren’t really similarities in plot or writing, but both books feature a cast of troubled and gifted young adults who can’t seem to get out of their own way.

I did like the hit of 90’s nostalgia. These characters were in college in the late 90’s and were near the beginning of their career on 9/11/2001, and I was too. There were a few video game references that were kind of fun, but I stopped enjoying video games at about the same time in my life that these characters started making them. Maybe that’s why I thought the protagonists were dislikeable; we just didn’t have a single thing in common even though we were the same age, and so we were like relatives or classmates that got forced on each other as kids by well-meaning adults.

SuperBetsy reviewed the same book, and she had a completely different opinion.