Chris Kluwe

Otaku is the debut novel from former NFL player and tech enthusiast Chris Kluwe, with a story reminiscent of Ready Player One and Ender's Game. Ditchtown. A city of skyscrapers, built atop the drowned bones of old Miami. A prison of steel, filled with unbelievers. A dumping ground for strays, runaways, and malcontents. Within these towering monoliths, Ashley Akachi is a young woman trying her best to cope with a brother who's slipping away, a mother who's already gone, and angry young men who want her put in her place. Ditchtown, however, is not the only world Ash inhabits. Within Infinite Game, a virtual world requiring physical perfection, Ash is Ashura the Terrible, leader of the Sunjewel Warriors, loved, feared, and watched by millions across the globe. Haptic chambers, known as hapspheres, translate their every move in the real to the digital—and the Sunjewel Warriors' feats are legendary. However, Ash is about to stumble upon a deadly conspiracy that will set her worlds crashing together, and in the real, you only get to die once...

Otaku

Fraser Simons

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~

Jelke Lenaerts

This book has content warnings for sexism, racism, prostitution and attempted rape.

  I received a galley of this book through Netgalley  

I think this book just wasn't for me. Right from the start we are thrown into the story with no real explenations and those never really come. We get to know the basics but not really a lot. Especially when it comes to the characters. All of them had previous connections but we never really get anything about their past together, which made it harder to care when it came to important moments between these characters. Overall, the plot also felt a bit lackluster to me. It wasn't really anything special add the fact that I didn't care for the characters and you just get me being bored throughout most of this book. All of these things I could contribute to personal prefference. However, there's one thing I think was just badly done and that's the discussion of social issues. They just felt thrown in and like an after thought. I'm especially talking about a certain scene where the MC takes a whole stance against the super religious people in her society (you know the tupe that hide their bigotted thoughts behind their religion) and her whole monologue just felt so random and it came out of nowhere. Same with the discussion around sexism. They just came up at certain moments but for most of the book it just wasn't there. I don't know, all of it just felt like an after thought, an attempt to look woke, and it just didn't work for me.

Heather Killeen

Rating: 3/5 dragons killed from the inside

Format: eBook. I’d like to thank NetGalley for a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review!

What it's like: It reminded me a bit of Ready Player One, but the violence, cursing and feminism themes were more like Nevernight by Jay Kristoff.

To sum up: This story features a badass female gamer stuck in a futuristic dystopian society. A lot of people in this world play THE INFINITE GAME, which is a virtual reality type of game where players can wear “hoods” or an entire “suit” that has amazing realistic feedback to make them feel like they are really in the game. Interestingly, there are also “spheres” players can play in so that the motions their avatar performs are actually performed by them in the sphere as it moves around them. This means that the best players are also super fit, making The Infinite Game more like a real sport. Unfortunately, there is a real toxic masculinity situation going on in the virtual world, as well as the real world. Our main character, Ash, has to deal with constant physical and verbal abuse from men who find her performance (or just existence really) threatening. Then, when it appears gamers might be being used to fight a real war using some new, dangerous tech, Ash gets pulled into a conspiracy that GOES ALL THE WAY TO THE TOP. With help from her SunJewel Warrior gaming crew and some family friends, Ash tries to do everything she can to save the ones she loves, even if that might mean saving her shitty town along with them.

What I loved: I was expecting some cool tech and some action-packed plot, but I wasn’t expecting to feel deeply for our main character Ash. She is so relatable and admirable, I couldn’t help but start rooting for her from the first page. She has a lot of responsibilities and she juggles them with efficiency, determination, and sass that any fellow Aries and Type A person would admire haha She reminds me a lot of Mia Corvere from Nevernight. She is fiercely loyal to those she loves, doesn’t take any shit, and knows how to defend herself. I loved what the author had to say about what it is like to be a woman (or a person of color, although I don’t have experience with this personally) in this world. It felt real and I felt like he really understood the fear that can permeate your life when you’re in a toxic environment and ultimately, how to keep on fighting even if you don’t think you can. I was also really surprised by some of the twists, this book was hard to put down.

What was meh: I think the weakest point for me was actually in the action scenes, which was surprising to me. The author uses a lot of tech and societal jargon/nomenclature that seemed to pile up to a point where I couldn’t understand meaning from context anymore. The action sequences felt disjointed, but also over described in ways that didn’t quite flow for me. I found myself skimming them after about a third of the way through the book and I don’t feel like much was lost, unfortunately. 

On that note, I had a lot of questions about how Ash’s city got the way it did, and whether it was like that all over the world. The focus is pretty narrow for most of the book, but when they did mention things outside their city, I had a hard time visualizing the specifics of space/distances and imagining what their wider world looked like. It wouldn’t be too big of a point to leave vague, except that her city (and later the world) and it’s dynamics are pretty crucial to the plot so I just wanted more concrete storytelling about that. I think maybe he tried to explain it in the beginning, but it was too much information and too much jargon for me to really absorb it? I might have to reread it to gain a better understanding. 

Who I'd recommend it to: 
Fans of Nevernight, Ready Player One, Snowcrash, and anyone looking for a virtual reality thriller with a dash of fantasy. 

Favorite lines:
Turns out people love watching displays of incredible physical prowess all the more when there’s no actual risk of traumatic long-term injury, no messy cleanup of battered heroes who’ve outlived their glory.

The socials have never been welcoming for those without a pale-skinned dick.

Kiro has no idea the turrets exist, has never had to worry about some things I’ve had to worry about. Must be nice having a dick.

“I didn’t do anything to them, bro. I just happen to be better than they are at something they think is important, and I’m a girl. They’re a lot of boardshits out there living shitty lives, and blaming women’s their only escape. Same as it ever was. 

War never changes, but it sure as hell changes us.

I lean the slightest bit farther forward, a deliberate motion, putting myself into his space, letting the words come out in a whisper, adrenaline singing its arpeggio across nerves and sinew and blood. “Lastly, you’re in front of me. You say you saw what I did to the boardshits, Sawyer? Then let’s go, round two, pick your fucking tune. I love to dance.”

I am Ashley, Ash, Ashura, Ashura the Terrible, and if ever there was a time to don that mantle, it’s now. Do the job, because there’s no one else to do it, and you find a way, even if it breaks you.

Otaku

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