4.0 out of 5 stars
Breezy YA-ish Adventures
Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on December 29, 2022
[This review covers the first three books in the series, but I don't believe there are any major spoilers]
By the time the aliens arrived, Earth had gone through a standard
"society collapses and corporations rule all" scenario with the still
employed in a "company store slavery" scenario while those even worse
off hang on in quiet (and less than quiet) desperation outside the arcologies
and live on scraps.
The aliens were not impressed, and decided not to invite Earth to join the
Galactic Consensus. They did, however, leave a gift: a limited number of
subscriptions to the Consensus's galaxy-spanning, immersive, online RPG
"The Tower of Somnus" (possibly so-called because those with subscriptions
end up inside the game when they sleep in the "real world"). In fact,
while it is definitely a classic RPG with dungeons, monsters & leveling-up,
it's a bit more that that: It's also a meeting place in a setting where
physical travel, though FTL, still takes way too long, and a space to
interact with alien cultures where, um, failed interactions, only involve
the death of someone's avatar and starting again at level one. "It'll be
good for them", figure the aliens...
Kat Debs is an employee, saddled at birth with a debt to the company
which she will never be able to pay off. Her best hope, since she's
smart, is to land a technical role which will at least keep her out
of the back-breaking labor workers such as her mother do. Graduation
is coming, and though she won't technically be Valedictorian, as
that honor will go to a Manager's child, she still expects to get
a good placement. That is, in fact, what happens, and while she
does some extra-legal work as a "runner" that gets her family a few
perks, her life seems set in a less than satisfactory, if better
than some, manner.
Things take an unexpected turn, however, when the boy she has an almost
relationship with, a Manager's son no-less, reveals that he has blown his
college fund on a Tower of Somnus invite and has, by luck, won an extra
invite in-game. An invite he wants to give to Kat so they can team up
on the Tower (he has long been impressed by her drive) and he can level-up
fast enough that his player status outweighs his father's ire when he learns
his son is not, in fact, in college and that the money is all gone.
This is a somewhat plausible course of action as it turns out that level-up
abilities earned in-game do in fact transfer to the real world (generally
degraded by about a third) as, essentially, physics-defying magic.
Unfortunately, said friend turns out to be not the man Kat thought he was,
or rather, the man she was afraid he might be, and is a total-washout
in the game. Kat, on the other hand, takes to The Tower Of Somnus as though
it were her native habitat, and falls into a very unusual (humans being
not particularly well regarded) teaming with two high-status aliens on
their way back up after particularly heroic avatar death. Her growing
status in the game gradually leaks over into the real-world, and she
gradually moves from "running" to full-fledged "Street Samurai" status,
which is good because other things are bleeding over from the game as well --
in particular the plans of a rather inimical species whom everybody else
is starting to think it was not a good idea to let into the Galactic Consensus
in the first place..
This is a series which has almost a classic YA feel to it. Kat is
young and learning the ropes, and there is no sex at all (though
in the last book she does start to realize she may be missing the
fact she is in a relationship). I guess you could say the fact that
the Tower & her real life are turning her into a merciless killing machine
rather militates against the YA setup, but that's the society in which
she operates, and she may have some long-term plans along other lines
for herself & her world. The narration is third person, and moves right
along. The characterization is not deep (in particular Kat's mother & sister
get pretty short shrift), but is efficient, and occasionally the characters
do surprise, in a good way. There are certainly things you should not
think too hard about, like how do different species sleep needs always
sync up neatly, how does effectively doing "always-on" affect the human
brain, and why does the Tower seem so much like a human RPG, so don't
think about those things, and enjoy. I liked all three books, and will
read the next as it comes.
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