The Barsoom Project

Dream Park #2

by Larry Niven, Steven Barnes

Dream Park, a futuristic virtual amusement park, turns very real when double agents using live ammunition wreak havoc on unsuspecting tourists, turning this technologically advanced haven into a nightmarish world. Reissue.

Genres: Science Fiction, Fiction, Fantasy, Mystery, Audiobook, Science Fiction Fantasy, Gaming

340 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published September 1, 1989

About the author

Laurence van Cott Niven's best known work is Ringworld (Ringworld, #1) (1970), which received the Hugo, Locus, Ditmar, and Nebula awards. His work is primarily hard science fiction, using big science concepts and theoretical physics. The creation of thoroughly worked-out alien species, which are very different from humans both physically and mentally, is recognized as one of Niven's main strengths.

Niven also often includes elements of detective fiction and adventure stories. His fantasy includes The Magic Goes Away series, which utilizes an exhaustible resource, called Mana, to make the magic a non-renewable resource.

Niven created an alien species, the Kzin, which were featured in a series of twelve collection books, the Man-Kzin Wars. He co-authored a number of novels with Jerry Pournelle. In fact, much of his writing since the 1970s has been in collaboration, particularly with Pournelle, Steven Barnes, Brenda Cooper, or Edward M. Lerner.

He briefly attended the California Institute of Technology and graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in mathematics (with a minor in psychology) from Washburn University, Topeka, Kansas, in 1962. He did a year of graduate work in mathematics at the University of California at Los Angeles. He has since lived in Los Angeles suburbs, including Chatsworth and Tarzana, as a full-time writer. He married Marilyn Joyce "Fuzzy Pink" Wisowaty, herself a well-known science fiction and Regency literature fan, on September 6, 1969.

Niven won the Hugo Award for Best Short Story for Neutron Star in 1967. In 1972, for Inconstant Moon, and in 1975 for The Hole Man. In 1976, he won the Hugo Award for Best Novelette for The Borderland of Sol.

Niven has written scripts for various science fiction television shows, including the original Land of the Lost series and Star Trek: The Animated Series, for which he adapted his early Kzin story The Soft Weapon. He adapted his story Inconstant Moon for an episode of the television series The Outer Limits in 1996.

He has also written for the DC Comics character Green Lantern including in his stories hard science fiction concepts such as universal entropy and the redshift effect, which are unusual in comic books.

http://us.macmillan.com/author/larryn...

Reviews

[Ralph Pulner · Rating 1 out of 5]

A mess of a book. Slightly offensive and fat phobic too? Really weird outcome, given the authors. I'm not sure what was going on while this written. I'm sure the story of how this made it to print might be more interesting than the book itself. If you liked Dream Park, let sleeping dogs lie.

[Daniel Bensen · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Barsoom Project by Larry Niven and Steve Barnes - It's great to be re-reading the Dream Park books. They're always a delight, richly layered under a deceptively simple adventure story. In this one, the authors (mostly Barnes according to the authors' note) had some things to say about mental and physical health. What's really keeping you from losing weight, and what can a story do to dig up those reasons and suggest solutions? Also, the story has Inuit gods and the sunken city of R'lyeh, powered by a radioactive Soviet satellite. The book talked about some heavy things, occasionally heavier than the authors could lift, but they got there.

[Gilbert Stack · Rating 4 out of 5]

The sequel to Dream Park is packed with more of what I loved in the first book. The novel opens with a crime. Someone has snuck a real rifle into one of the games and the poor gamer who wields the weapon unintentionally commits murder. Eight years later, Dream Park is hosting an international conference trying to raise money for the Barsoom Project, an ambitious plan to build a high-tech elevator capable of lifting cargo to and from orbit at a fractional cost. To make certain all the conference participants are in a properly happy mood, Dream Park has been opened to their families so the families can play while the financial arrangements are worked out. But there are tons of problems. The financiers represent every country on earth and many are affiliated with terrorist groups. It’s a security nightmare for our hero, Alex Griffon.

One of those relatives is playing in one of the roleplaying games including her internet friend, Michelle, who just so happens to be the emotionally traumatized woman whose weapon killed a man in Dream Park eight years ago. Michelle’s presence attracts the wrong kind of attention and suddenly Dream Park security sees an opportunity to finish solving the crime from eight years earlier. So while the players are up against an extremely challenging mystery that once again appears to weld modern tech into magical mythologies, Griffon is pitting his mind and his team against a clever modern terrorist. This one is exciting from beginning to end.

If you liked this review, you can find more at www.gilbertstack.com/reviews.

[Craig · Rating 4 out of 5]

I didn't enjoy this one quite so much as the first volume, but it's a fun mystery/adventure with lots of interesting Martian speculation. It has a fannish slant that I especially enjoyed.

[Mark · Rating 2 out of 5]

I read and enjoyed the first book centred around a theme park using what we would call now augmented reality.

I didn't like this half as much.

The first book had a competitive element so the game played out like an exciting version of Gladiators the game here is a narrative game so it's like watching someone play dungeons & dragons.

Can the guide navigate the ether to contact the spirits?
Well yes because she is an actor, there is no spirit and it is scripted that she will.

It is a fantasy inside a fantasy so it is all a bit silly. You want a sixty foot woman, to use a whale penis as a club or have a guy with a butt for a face? You got it.

What ruined this for me though was the amount of "stuff"
There is the game, an attached weight-loss program, an unsolved murder, corporate espionage, computer hacking, romance, concepts of space travel.
I got lost in the swamp of "stuff"

I was compelled to finish though as it is well written and intriguing.
I am not a particularly strong reader and mostly at night - perhaps if you have more focus and better quality reading time than me you may really get into this - I just couldn't.

[Dixie Conley · Rating 5 out of 5]

I could call every book in the Dream Park series my favorite and not be lying. This one's my favorite for the theme: overcoming addiction disorders, specifically, eating disorders. That it also touches on insanity, and escapism as part of that insanity, only makes it resonate more for me. In that way, it's a very personal book, as I can relate personally to it.

In this book, a LARP game is going on at the same time as a presentation on terraforming Mars. The game is aimed not so much at gamers as those needing to lose weight or overcome other similar issues. One of the participants is the niece of one of the main voices in the terraforming project and thus requires security in the form of a bodyguard to make sure she isn't assassinated while playing. Also she gets a friend into the game, a friend who has a tragic secret relating to the first time this game was played, when it was done for real gamers. She thinks the game is real and is trembling on the edge of complete loss of sanity.

So several things are going on at once. The best of those is the game, Fimbulwinter, which is based in Inuit tradition and has to do with the end of the world due to the sun going out. Lots of swashbuckling adventure, history and clever -- and psychological -- puzzles.

An amazing book. One of my all-time favorites.

[AndrewP · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sequel to Dream Park - not quite as good but still very enjoyable.

[Peter Tillman · Rating 1 out of 5]

Tried twice: 1995, 2011.

[Thom · Rating 3 out of 5]

This second book in what is now a series of four was written six years after the first. In this double mystery are elements of the game, the park workings, and an in-park presentation being made to pitch "The Barsoom Project", a Mars colonization effort.

Read this one originally in or shortly after college. Star Trek TNG debuted while this was being written, and I wonder if their holodeck influenced the authors. The mystery and characters are good, and we see humor from the players of the game, one of whom is a comedian. An afterword talks about sources for the legends and science, and also the IFGS, a real-life society founded to try and create a real Dream Park sometime in the future.

This book references the original novel, but could almost stand alone. Purchased the third book also, but not sure whether I read it at the time. That mystery will be solved this year, when I attempt to finish off this series.

[A Critical Reader · Rating 2 out of 5]

Wonders never cease: I finished The Barsoom Project.

The Barsoom Project is one of those ideal sequels: If you liked the first book, this gives you more of the same. If you didn't like the first book, you won't like this one, either. For me, it held the same problem: I find it difficult to suspend my disbelief in the setup, in that the park as advertised would ever work.

However, where Dream Park was a charming, pretty straight-forward whodunnit used to display the authors' true show piece, the park, The Barsoom Project feels more... confused, the plot needlessly convoluted. And a lot of the "this is a game" mechanical stuff is skipped, as the authors almost attempt to paint a picture of the Dream Park as an alternate reality, without quite going there.

I also personally didn't like the "Inuit spirits vs the world" story-within-a-story the park visitors go through. Not because I find it offensive (and anybody who tries to tell you it is offensive is a bloody moron; of which we seem to have way too many in 2020), but rather because it feels... constructed, unrelatable, just not very exciting. It's basically one long string of "a spirit did it". Boring!

This all adds up to making The Barsoom Project a lot more of a slog to go through than the first book. In the end, this has to be a 2/5 ("it's OK") from me, down from 3/5 for the first book. A shame, really, and it pains me to have to rate a Niven book with a mere two stars, but it is what it is. Not a horrible book, but unless you just absolutely fell in love with Dream Park, you can easily skip The Barsoom Project and your life won't be the worse for it.

[James · Rating 2 out of 5]

This one did not do well on the reread (3->2) stars. I found it unengaging, and missing most of the elements that made the first book work. To start with this is a "Fat-ripper" game, a minor issue as with the first book, overuse of the word chunky with respect to women. This style of game is not competitive, and so much of the interest in the game is lost as both the gamers and the staff are doing this for therapy not for points. The result is that the reader does not care about the game, the contestants or anything really.

The other subplot with a nefarious middle eastern chap is also very poorly plotted, and has a frankly ridiculous conclusion with no setup or basis.

Finally a lot of the tension revolves around some mental illness that seems ridiculously simplified in terms of how it expresses itself, and becomes more of a crutch for the plot than anything realistic.

Probably won't return to this ever again...

[✘✘ Sarah ✘✘ (former Nefarious Breeder of Murderous Crustaceans) · Rating 2 out of 5]

A very disappointing sequel to Dream Park. I felt that there were too many distracting sub plots and characters which made the story confusing and quite boring. This sequel wasn't nearly as entertaining or enjoyable as Dream Park.

[PhilomathicJ · Rating 3 out of 5]

Definitely not as good as the first book in the series, but it was a'ight. #LazyReview

[Deb Omnivorous Reader · Rating 4 out of 5]

The second in the Dream Park series, I read the first one last year and loved it as much as I had when I first read it. This one, I didn't remember that well but I do remember being a little disappointed in that none of the Dream Park sequels were quire as good as the original.

Going into the Barsoom Project with that memory was very useful because the beginning is not that great. So we start with a Prologue which IS great it is a real hook: We are in a Dream Park LARP game and it goes horribly wrong in that instead of a ‘game firearm’ a real one has been smuggled in.

Then we skip ahead to the ‘present day’ if you will, remembering that Dream Park is a way in the future anyway and that this book is 7 - 8 years after the first one. Chapters one to three are real downers and if I didn’t know things were going to pick up I might have just ended the experience there. The Barsoom Project is a big, multibillion dollar project which is being proposed for Mars and showcased in Dream Park. We are introduced to too many names, too many factions, too much politics way too fast. And, while it is relevant to the long term plot it is not fun and there is NO immediate obvious relevance. I am going to call this out as a poor writing decision. Now in HINDSIGHT one can see the authors were trying to set up a sense of how important the Barsoom project is to the human race. How many factions have an interest or a desire to make it fail. HOW important one particular player – from a spacer family is. It is trying to set the stakes of the whole book but I didn’t get that until toward the end and I never did love it.

The other thing the book really is not great at is too many threads here! The game (when it finally stutters to a start) is good, if not as dynamic as the first one. But there are too many plots trying too hard and way too loose.

The characterisation is also not brilliant, again too many, not well introduced, by the end of the book I still did not know who a couple of these people were.

Actually, once the game gets underway it is a fun notion: The world is settling into an unexplained winter and the last airplane to escape San Francisco airport is heading to Alaska when it has an accident. The people on board meet up with a modern clan of Eskimos/Inuit who provide a spiritual explanation, based in native mythology, for the winter that is setting into the world. The gamers, in order to win the game, must follow the prompts and defeat the bad guys and save the world from a Fimbrilwinter. All good.

I did love the game time at this point. Now, we the readers figure out early that the woman from the prologue is back in the game under an assumed name. Dream Park security takes longer to figure it out, not until she is killed out of the game, in a sequence that should not have been there at all, do they start to look at her. Head of security, Alex Griffin, is the one that puts it all together for us, Eviane had entered the game as a guest of someone with diplomatic immunity, someone Dream Part is scared will be targeted by terrorists. When Eviane is put out of the game it becomes clear that she has psychiatric issues and in unable to tell reality from game time in a normal fashion.

So it is a pretty complicated plot, which is good. The characters are mostly pretty good too.

There is another thing that makes it a bit… dated by modern sensibilities. This game is not just a normal game for people who want to play. It is actually a sociological experiment. The people who are playing have paid for the game but less than it is worth, this is a ‘Fat Ripper’ game. Most of the gamers are overweight though there are other eating disorders and a couple of substance abuse cases. The game is designed to study their responses and to ‘programme’ them to better habits. And while that is not a terrible theme for SFF I am not sure that some of the elements of the story are especially compliant with modern sensibilities. Which is odd, really, because there are 'health spas' and reality Teeve galore about weight loss, but the way it is discussed here may not suite some modern sensibilities I feel.

Anyhow, while not as brilliant as Dream Park, I thoroughly enjoyed this one overall and fully intend to seek out more instalments in the series. The authors, in the afterword describe the effort and measures they put into research of Inuit cultures and shamanistic mythologies correct and I think they did a good job.

[Mark Schlatter · Rating 2 out of 5]

Definitely not a great reading experience for many reasons, and here's the big one. In the prequel (Dream Park), we are introduced to the eponymous amusement park featuring live role playing games in totally immersive environments. The first book features (mostly) experienced gamers acting out (mostly) traditional classes (Warrior, Magic User, Engineer, ...) in an event run by an International Fantasy Gaming Association. It's a big deal to everyone involved.

In contrast, the game featured in this book is a "Fat Ripper" --- an immersive experience designed to help the players lose pounds and change eating habits. (The latter is often accomplished by psychological effects, such as having your food talk to you during a meal or honoring the spirits of the animals you are eating.) So, we have a regular adventure in Dream Park (based in Inuit culture) combined with... attitude adjustment? And the effects are threefold:

1) There's a strange combination of fat-shaming (particularly at the beginning of the book) with some heavily gender-based body positivity. At the least, we've got men who are overweight (but it covers a lot of muscle) and women who are overweight (but the book sure wants us to know how sexy they are). So, it's as if the book wants to approach the issue of weight loss and can't really decide on a tone.

2) Unlike the prequel, our adventurers aren't broken into classes, and they're all there for mainly one purpose (the "Fat Ripper"). So, the cast isn't that differentiated, and - for the first half of the book - I had troubles connecting names with characters. That issue did diminish by the second half, but it was enough of an issue that I looked forward to the chapters featuring Dream Park personnel over in-game chapters.

3) As mentioned above, there's a LOT of psychological manipulation in this book. What's surprising is seeing it both inside and outside the game, including some performed on a character with severe mental trauma. By the end of the novel, Niven and Barnes provide some "you don't watch to see the sausage being made" speeches, but the result is a layer of darkness a couple of times heavier than the first book and a less appealing setting.

There are other issues. Just like in the prequel, the game story involves Europeans rescuing an indigenous culture. And the title of the book refers to an almost unconnected plot point (the parent company of Dream Park wants to spearhead colonization of Mars) that seems to be little more than an excuse to feature space elevator porn (that is, expositional pieces on the benefits and drawbacks of different types of space elevators, not sex in a space elevator).

And yet... the second half of the book is much better, with some good callbacks to the first book and nice pieces of actions. I will probably drop this out of my collection, but I had some fun rereading it.

[Amber DiTullio · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Barsoom Project had always been my least favorite of the Dream Park series. The story was good, but it just didn't pull me in the same way Dream Park or did. This reading, I finally figured out why - the ending of the Fimbulwinter game is some serious deux ex machina. The gamer in me knows that I would be seriously disappointed if my party had done all this work for a god to come in and kill the big boss.

That said, it isn't a bad story. I like the idea of a Fat Ripper game and wish something like that really existed - I would definitely go through it. I was rooting for everyone - Max and Michelle/Eviane in particular - to make the difficult changes they needed to be healthier. I also liked Michelle's story, coming back after 8 years to heal. And Gwen and Ollie were a couple of my favorites from the original Dream Park so seeing them back made me smile. For me, the game that's being run is always the more exciting part of the story.

I couldn't really get interested in the machinations of the Barsoom Project that was happening concurrently though. It was a decent way to bring in the overall story's big boss, but it just felt kind of flat to me. It could be in part that science fiction isn't my forte. And it did help answer some of the questions from the previous books (along with bringing Tony McWhirter back and seeing Griff keeping his promise). Plus, the end scene for the big boss was a wonderful mind-screw.

Like with the first book, I was also more aware of some of the stereotypes of the Inuit people put in. And like in the previous book, I'm willing to give leeway with it because I don't believe in judging yesterday's society through today's lens (not to excuse, but to understand and do better in future). I'm not terribly familiar with Inuit culture, though, so it's also possible that I was bothered by things that someone from the culture wouldn't be.

In the end, this still is my least favorite book of the series, though it's not a bad read overall. I definitely recommend it, in large part because it helps complete the Dream Park picture.

[Brian Paterson · Rating 2 out of 5]

Sorry, who’s account and personal information are we accessing from moment to moment? There are too many characters present in this story. The Dramatis Personae is a turn off from the start and character ‘development’ and ‘resolution’ misnomers in my opinion. This is all over the place, pop, pop, pop from one account (narrative and HR file) to the next and frankly in each scene I’m often at a loss to know which focus character the author’s ‘algorithm’ supposedly pulls these aggregated thoughts and observations from.
So, is the mystery girl Evaine or Michelle? Please tell me. I still don’t know the answer. Instead, several men have mansplained this point on her behalf. No doubt, like with Schrodinger’s Cat, the men do so on the basis of an incomplete data set. They discover (shock horror!) that these gamers didn’t share information of a private personal nature in their questionnaires. Is anyone surprised? The disembodied narrator is similarly blind where it counts and therefore of no use to me as an information source. I see no sunlight between the god-narrator and the bumbling creeps in labcoats who run the tech-sploitation trap. So, we watch the cameras roll and somehow maybe in the last few chapters stitch together a coherent story for later theatrical release? To me, at the end, that’s what this reads like.
Finally, I find that nothing blows me out of a book more than characters having sex unaware that a dodgy Park psychiatrist is watching by CCTV, himself clueless that he is in turn judged by an impossibility (all powerful mind reading narrator) yet one who unironically holds every character present under similarly intrusive surveillance.
Instead of all the mind-reading, have a character with a heartbeat or equivalent tell me their own story in whatever way their character is comfortable with.

[Ian · Rating 4 out of 5]

I’ve got to voice my issue with this installment; it wasn’t as clear who the players were, making the out of game time less impactful.

The first dream park book I found to be more straightforward, all parts moving in harmony. This one felt like 3 distinct sections out of sync but still clearly apart of the whole. There is the game, pauses in the game (meals and sleep)and then Backstage.

The Backstage drama was what I enjoyed the best, there is a sampling of the park beyond the game that is the focus, and creative engineers who are a little crazy. It may also be that some of the behind the scenes people are the same from the first book, making them sort of old friends to hold on to.

And the Authors Notes are insightful; it’s possible that these lengthy sections bracketing the story is the main reasons I feel that Dream Park itself is more ethical than the works of Micheal Creighton [Westworld & Jurassic Park]. People at Dream Park may not be the greatest when it comes to ethics, there is a thriller element to these books, that these books have a mystery, that someone did something wrong at dream park, not the park itself or those in charge are the problem.

I’ve already started “the California voodoo game” before remembering update Goodreads if that tells you anything….

[Randolph King · Rating 2 out of 5]

This books is a follow-on to Dream Park. In this, the Dream Park business is running a new simulation, an end-of-the world scenario with mythological connections. But things are going on behind the scenes. When a player dies before it should be possible, an investigation begins turning up murder and conspiracy - and a return character operating under an alias and with a hidden past.

The dream story is interesting. It was well-researched and involves some Inuit history and mythology, and we see the players drawn into an interesting culture.

However, I didn't feel the story was as good as the previous one. The characters are a bit shallow, which is moderately typical for Niven. But the story is very creative, which is also typical. In the end, I didn't feel as if everything was adequately explained, such as the code modifications which had to get around security and have a very good understanding of their technology. The mystery player seemed to be far too uninteresting in the end, she had a lot of potential and should have been more complex. With the weak ending and the lack of character development I can't recommend this book.

[Fliandin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Look this isn't for everyone. Its fantasy, sci fi, and lets face it not 2020's era. Still having read this first in the 90's I love how it holds up.

If you grew up in the age of Atari, NES, and arcades, if you were a bit of a geek or nerd and you longed for making games into real world experiences, this will likely delight you as it did for me as a kid back when.

Whats good, holodeck style gaming, with actors, and holograms, and robotics. We have mythologies brought in from various cultures, we have a murder and whodunit. We even have mental health checks from a time before it was yet common place. Believable angst over what happens as we become adults and look fondly back on our youth.

Reading this as a teen and again as I approach 50 I can say this is a well done book, that brings in a good story and a lot of real experience to make believable characters in a place that feels like its still just a few years away from becoming reality.

[Kevin Phyland · Rating 3 out of 5]

Eight years after the events of Dream Park the park is testing a new game for problem eaters (Fat Rippers) set in the Fimbulwinter scenario featuring Inuit myths and visions. Unbeknownst to all participants and organisers one of the players is from the original sabotage years ago and is being run without her knowledge by the unscrupulous Fekesh. At the same time money is being raised for the Barsoom Project - an expensive but potentially lucrative terraforming project on Mars - which will utilise skyhooks and algal seeding but the money depends on companies that have been funnelling
moneys into Dream Park affiliates. Should Dream Park suffer another accident/sabotage this money would flee. I wanted to like this book as Steven Barnes & Larry Niven did a good job with Dream Park but I think this sequel suffers in comparison. Lots of interesting stuff happens in the game but you know it's a game and really only the last thirty pages bring any real tension.

[Mark Isaak · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is certainly ambitious. Set in and around a park which creates realistic-seeming fantasy worlds using technology, the story combines the fantasy game of adventurers saving the world from evil Inuit mythical beings, a murder mystery about a death during a game years ago, plans by the park's parent company to raise money to colonize Mars, and a threat of sabotage by players wanting to drop the company's stock value. Most of the narrative concentrates on the fantasy story, and the other thread spend a lot of time forgotten in the background. In fact, the Barsoom (Mars) Project never seriously enters the foreground; it's just there to bring all the characters together. There are a lot of characters, few of which I found all that interesting. The stories were all creative and entertaining, although some of the battle scenes were hard to follow.

[Mark White · Rating 2 out of 5]

In the first few pages we hear "Gwen had become almighty tired of Mazie's gaming stories." The authors then proceed to fill 3/4 of the book with someone's gaming story, the action of which is completely irrelevant to the Barsoom sub-plot that should have been front and centre. The conclusion of that plot line where the villain gets his comeuppance is completely fantastical, a Mission Impossible scenario in which they seem to have penetrated the enemy security and installed endless trickery without being noticed. It's all very well to say any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic, but this is just magic, with no attempt to tie it to a believable and consistent technology. Despite liking the original Dream Park I found this completely unsatisfying. I'm thinking twice about whether I should read the third.

[Macjest · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not even close to as good as the first book, Dream Park. It’s now 8 years later and so many things are going in the story along with a ton of annoying info dump. It starts out with a game with no introduction. Then we are bored to tears with the project from the title. The company that runs Dream Park is starting up a project to get off Earth. Way more info than I care about. Meanwhile we are introduced to another game - a fat ripper. Players are ostensibly in it to lose weight. However, there’s been some sabotage in the past as well as the present. See what I mean about too much going on? When it’s just the game, it’s kind of fun, at least enough to keep me interested. There are more books in the series, so I’ll try the next one to see if it gets back on track.

[Katie · Rating 1 out of 5]

I was so excited to read this book having read Dream Park and having enjoyed it enormously a few months ago. On this occasion, I struggled my way to Chapter 10, page 92 and have now put the book aside as a DNF. It started off really well but once we got to the actual game, it became turgid and slow and very heavy on the mythology, the other problem is I found it very difficult to engage with the characters who just were not as likeable as those in the first book, although there are some of them who pop up occasionally from book 1. For me this book just did not get going early enough, oh well, maybe I will pick it up again in the future, but I rather doubt it...

[Richard Pulfer · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's more virtual reality theme park shenanigans, this time at a weight loss program called the Fat Ripper. Once again, something sinister is afoot and Dream Park security Alex Griffin must investigates. Beyond the similarities, there is a lot to like with this book - the characters feel stronger, and the emphasis on weight loss makes the band of gamers feel more relatable. Unfortunately, the book feels a bit torn between several POV characters - it almost feels like the book would have been stronger if it was a standalone story with just a few links to the first book. Still, it's a fun read by two great sci-fi legends.

[Nathan Erickson · Rating 3 out of 5]

Entertaining read. Interesting take on VR from the early 90's. Good stuff about what it would take for colonizing mars. The inuit lore was also very interesting since you don't see much of that around.

Overall plot was decent though hardly innovative. The fat ripper hit a bit close to home. The resolution just kinda happened then it was over.

[Aaron Delp · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good, not great

Dream Park was the reason I read this. A little too much going on and a bit hard to follow at times. Lots of characters with switching fantasy and IRL names used interchangeable

[Paul-Baptiste · Rating 3 out of 5]

Enjoyable, but not as solid as Dream Park; I think it suffered from a bit of bloat with just too much going on. That being said, still an entertaining story that kept me moving. As with Dream Park, this one showed signs of aging. Computer power = large computers. Lots of smoking going on...

[Edelweiss · Rating 2 out of 5]

A decent idea but I'm less a fan than of this first one, even though I like this idea better. I also am aware that I am not always the best at subtext and implication, but I also was made very uncomfortable by the way that the overweight were treated in the book.