Book Review by Aarene Storms: In Real Life

In Real Life by Cory Doctorow and Jen Wang

"If you will play as a girl in Coursegold Online, you will be given probationary memberships in Clan Fahrenheit. If you measure up in three months, you'll be full-fledged members."

Anda loves the game, loves the adventure, loves the camaraderie with players from all over the world. Another player invites her to participate in a sideline of the game: killing "gold farmers" who skew the game by playing skilled characters to win treasure that is then sold online for real money to lazy players who have more cash than inclination to play.

Then, Anda's character actually talks to a gold miner's character, and discovers that "Raymond/Ah Duo" is a teenaged boy in China working 12 hour shifts for minimal pay and no medical benefits. She is appalled, and talks Raymond into trying to organize his fellow-workers to demand better pay from their bosses. Predictably, Raymond is fired and his friends are mad at Anda for interfering in stuff she doesn't understand.

There are so many things to love about this book. The artwork is fun and inviting. Anda is anygirl, not a curvy blonde cheerleader, but instead a chunky young teen with a brain and a heart. It's about a MMO game ("massive multiplayer online," which involves people playing together from their own terminals scattered worldwide), and has awesome female player characters which is almost unheard-of. The game looks like great fun, and the concept of recruiting girls to play female characters in-game is a welcome idea. The situation, based on real circumstances in China and beyond, where kids work sweatshop hours for minimal pay to earn money for gold mining bosses deserves to be known.

And then there are the flaws: It's heavy-handed. No, really. It's. Heavy. Handed. And a little patronizing, too: the implication is that those poor Chinese people aren't clever enough to unionize until an American teen shows up and tells them how to solve their problems, so they follow her instructions and it all eventually works great. The adults on Anda's side of the keyboard find out what she's done, understand it implicitly, and are gushingly proud of her for standing up to bullies, and the whole dilemma is resolved with the tidiness of an Afterschool Special.

Just like real life?

Yeah, no.

Overall, the things I loved about the book outweighed the flaws, but I really expected more complexity from this publisher. 

Ah, well.

Rating:

Recommended for readers ages 12 to adult, especially teen girls, and especially gamers.  

Minor cussing, in-game violence, no nudity or sexual situations.

The events may not have happened; still, the story is true.  --R. Silvern

Aarene Storms, youth services librarian

Richmond Beach and Lake Forest Park Libraries, KCLS