Nice kid, tries hard

So the wife and kid are still off visiting her family for Christmas but since I had to come back to work I have ample time on my hands. Better knock out a few posts. I don't visit well, whatever social flaws I have I know this one for a fact. So before we went off to see her folks I stocked up on some books to pass the time. One of them in particular sounded right up my alley. Sadly it began to fall short rather quickly.

The premise of this book is akin to, World of Warcraft mixed with the Matrix. Imagine that a crazy genius invented the equivalent of the Matrix but built it so that there were many worlds within that you could visit and it played just like an RPG. You level up your avatar, can collect magic items or sci fi tech and so long as you are in a PVP zone you can kill anothers avatar or be killed yourself. While this wont do anything to your actual body there are no respawns, you die, you start a new avatar at level 1. Now this crazy tech guy became stupid rich and he loved the 1980's especially all the geek culture that one who grew up in that era would have been exposed to. So when he dies and his video will is read on every station the world finds out that since he has no relatives, all of his wealth and control of his company that runs this virtual world will go to the first person to find the "easter egg" that he has somewhere in this virtual world. 

Well that sounds all right to me, and for the first little bit it was. The writing was passable and the story was laden with cliches but there were enough nerd "inside joke" passages that it kept me reading for a while. However the story never gets up onto its own feet. If you have ever seen the comedy of someone like Dane Cook then you might understand. It became nonstop "look at all these pop culture references, isn't that awesome? You can feel like you are in on all this." At one point the main character is talking about his DeLorean done up like Back to the Future, with Ghostbusters logo's on the gull wing doors, and a few other one offs thrown on top. It was like looking at someone wearing a hat on top of a hat. There is potential galore in the book, and I wish the author had gone back and trimmed and polished more until this book wasn't just a guilty little pleasure but an enjoyable read in its own right. But if you want a quick little read that has nerdy "easter eggs" riddled through it give this book a shot.