The novel bends its narrative form to assume the structure of the games in various places. How did your reading experience shift in those sections? Did the format enhance your immersion into the worlds the team was building?

The novel bends its narrative form to assume the structure of the games in various places—namely, Both Sides, the NPC, and Pioneers sections. How did your reading experience shift in those sections? Did the format enhance your immersion into the worlds the team was building?

I am not a gamer -- I am in fact 75, and these sections of the book were so much Greek to me. I don not "grok" (my computer tells me this means "to understand intuitively") this stuff so I found these sections pretty much inaccessible. I did not find myself "immersed into the worlds the team was building."

I loved the structure of the novel. It reminded me of my favorite fantasy novel The Starless Sea by Erin Morgenstern. Both novels are circular at times, and move between reality and fantasy in a beautiful way.

The Pioneer level was my favorite section of the book and definitely helped me immerse myself in the world of open-world MMORPG games which I was not familiar with before reading this book.

I found the part about Marx at his end unbelievably beautiful in the way that it was written.

I don’t consider myself a gamer these days but when I was younger we loved the console games in the restaurants and we were avid pong and space invader fans at home I remembered donkey Kong and pacman as being favorites as well.
This question made me think about how the storylines started and stopped like some games shift to different levels or you die and have to start over, also the shared storylines with shifting POV could be seen as different characters in a game. That’s a really interesting point I had not thought of and makes me like the book even more!

I really liked the structure of the writing and the difference when it talked about the game. It allowed me to take my mind into the game mode.

I’m not and never have been a gamer but I found the narrative structure of the book to be fascinating and one of its strengths. I thought the mirroring of the games was only one of the narrative’s many brilliant touches - like the first person shift into the unconscious mind of Marx. This uses of Shakespeare are also rewarding to those familiar with his plays. Overall it was a beautiful narrative.

I feel the narrative form including the gaming aspect added to the book.

Yes! As a none gamer, I appreciated those parts of the novel. It taught me something new. I REALLY liked Sam’s pioneer world to communicate with Sadie and I loved being inside that world for a bit.