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This is Not a Game

(Dagmar Shaw #1)

Walter Jon Williams (Goodreads Author)

3.77 · Rating details · 2,541 ratings · 289 reviews

“Walter Jon Williams is a visionary of tremendous power and originality . . . He kills every damn time.”
--Junot Díaz, Pulitzer Prize-winning author

When you play one of Dagmar’s online games, you can’t just shut down the computer and walk away. The games pursue you into real life: you start getting emails and phone calls from fictional characters, perfect strangers ask “Walter Jon Williams is a visionary of tremendous power and originality . . . He kills every damn time.”
--Junot Díaz, Pulitzer Prize-winning author

When you play one of Dagmar’s online games, you can’t just shut down the computer and walk away. The games pursue you into real life: you start getting emails and phone calls from fictional characters, perfect strangers ask you to help solve their problems, and sometimes you’re asked to volunteer for a mission to discover a vital clue.

But now something is pursuing Dagmar.

From the anarchy of a street riot in Indonesia to the brutality of a Mafia killing in Los Angeles, from the seedy glitz of Hollywood to the ruthless international currency market, Dagmar finds herself at the center of an intrigue far more desperate than those she devises for entertainment.

And somehow, she knows, the key to the puzzle lies in her own past, and the gaming group she joined in college.

Dagmar must draw on all her skill to preserve her life, not the least of which is her circle of online gamers whose well-honed puzzle-solving skills are brought to bear.

This Is Not a Game. And there is no Second Life.

“Williams (The Rift) weaves intriguing questions about games, gamers and their relationships with real life into this well-paced near-future thriller.” --Publisher’s Weekly (starred review)

“This Is Not a Game is a compelling mystery, one that threateningly demands—like a militant nun, ruler in hand, your knuckles spread before her—for you to continue, to finish. Stopping, it’s not an option. It’s not even a thought. You turn the pages of the book not just to get answers, but to get the questions, also. And neither disappoint. There is no letdown, no clumsy resolution, no descent into lameness. Everything works, the story coming together beautifully like a well-played game of chess, Williams maneuvering the reader, skillfully. Like a pawn. A very happy pawn. –Paul Stotts

“Williams, from his own experience, knows how these games work and how the participants react, and the result is that This Is Not a Game succeeds only as a suspense novel, but as an incisive portrait of a subculture for whom reality is increasingly contingent, and increasingly mediated.” --Gary Wolfe, Locus

“Combines droll satire, cyber-fu knowingness, ingenious extrapolation, social commentary, and techno-thriller suspense.” --SciFiWire.com

“[An] eerily prophetic thriller.”
...more

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Kindle Edition, 396 pages

Published October 15th 2017 (first published March 2009)

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Feb 17, 2011 Mike (the Paladin) rated it it was ok · review of another edition

By page 60 I knew that my interest, which had waned earlier, wasn't coming back. I don't know maybe I'm too old or the wrong generation for this book. Told from points of view varying from "Dagmar" (our game designer protagonist) to the people "back at the office" and of course, the people on the internet the story wanders along seemingly searching for a conspiracy to be part of. With the danger and threats of the real world closing in around her and her survival in question Dagnar has reached o ...more

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Jul 07, 2019 Peter Tillman rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: friend-recos, on-reserve, at-bg-pa

2019 reread. A slow start and the gamer stuff put me off, to the point that I considered putting it aside. But the novel really starts to cook when the action shifts back to LA, and the murders start....
Dagmar Shaw is an engaging anti-hero and the geeky computer stuff is appealing even if I didn't believe for more than a moment that gold-farming software could take over the world! WJW is a good enough writer to almost pull it off. Not one of his best novels, but the second half is very fast-mov ...more

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Aug 06, 2010 Alan rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Recommends it for: Gamers, gamines and anyone who's game for a fast-paced story

Recommended to Alan by: Charles Stross, inter alia

This Is Not An Average Novel

An intense near-future thriller that merges live-action role playing games with a realistic high-tech plot—this is one SF mystery that really works. Published almost simultaneously with Charles Stross' similar Halting State, it shares a number of general plot points—the intersection of online life, role-playing, with so-called "meatspace," in particular—but goes in a radically different direction.

This Is Not A One-Note Book

The novel is structured as a series of revela This Is Not An Average Novel

An intense near-future thriller that merges live-action role playing games with a realistic high-tech plot—this is one SF mystery that really works. Published almost simultaneously with Charles Stross' similar Halting State, it shares a number of general plot points—the intersection of online life, role-playing, with so-called "meatspace," in particular—but goes in a radically different direction.

This Is Not A One-Note Book

The novel is structured as a series of revelations, each foreshadowed by the chapter titles, which all begin "This is not a..." We start with Dagmar, whose not-a-vacation has encountered a hitch when she gets stuck in a luxury hotel in Jakarta as a revolution unfolds around her. Dagmar is the primary viewpoint character, but she's only one of four protagonists. While I never really saw Dagmar in my mind's eye, I liked her immediately as a character, and eventually I got used to not really knowing what she looked like. The other three major characters—BJ, Austin and especially Charlie (hmm, any particular Charlie in mind, Walter?)—are more physically distinct.

Dagmar was en route from India, where she was overseeing a lavish—if fake—wedding, the climax of a carefully-managed role-playing experience that merges online gaming with real-world entertainment in a way few, if any, of our contemporary media have managed. That is what Dagmar and her associates do for a living, actually—their company (well, it's Charlie's company, really), Great Big Idea, creates such experiences on a subscription basis. Of course, mingling fantasy with mundanity this way can make dramatic events difficult to take at face value...

This Is Not—Quite—The End Of The Review

Even in the midst of the chaos, it is Dagmar's connectedness—her wired existence—that helps her most. This coherent central theme is developed throughout the book; while there are plenty of dramatic face-to-face encounters, and individuals do heroic things, over and over it is collective action—mediated and amplified by ubiquitous online communication—that consistently gets results.

Despite the dramatic and all-around interesting time in which Dagmar lives, I can imagine far worse futures to find myself in. This is a fun, fast and high-octane novel. ...more

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Jan 17, 2012 Alain DeWitt rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: 2012

This is the first Walter Jon Williams book I've read. I picked it up at a passenger terminal in Afghanistan somewhere because I had finished the book I was reading and didn't have anything to read and this looked interesting. Rest assured it won't be the last.

A complex tale involving a specific type of video game called an alternate reality game (ARG). An ARG is a game that blurs the line between a fictional reality and our own 'real' reality. In an ARG, characters from the game will contact pla ...more

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Feb 13, 2011 Josh rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: reread, own, read_2017, favorites, tech_fi, read_2011

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

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Feb 18, 2012 Mitchell rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: favorites, fiction, five-star, own, published-2009, science-fiction, liked-reviews, reread, to-buy, candidate-powelsssfgroup

A comfortable reread - sort of a kinder gentler Daemon - though that's not something I knew the first time I read this. And definitely remembering the scene in a later book when Dagmar is given test questions with a lie detector and gives surprising answers, changes the feel of this book. And yet I still haven't searched out and played an Alternative Reality Game.

And another re-read. This time a bit too fast and remembering a bit too much. And now I have played an ARG - though Ingress is a far c ...more

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May 25, 2020 Phil rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Shelves: science-fiction, cyberpunk

Not the best outing for Williams, sad to say. The four main characters are all involved in an alternative reality game (ARG) that has millions of players, who interact both on the web and in reality. Set in a near future (almost always a killer after the novel has been out for a decade or so), the lines begin to blur between the game and reality when people start getting murdered. This is really a thriller, so to give a synopsis of the plot would be to give away the novel. This book tries to be ...more

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Apr 06, 2009 Nicole rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: fierce-females, smart-alecs, sci-fi, contemp-pop-fiction

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. This turned out to be a really good choice for a nervous time in which I needed distraction and for weather that was just too bloody hot to do much of anything else but read after getting home from work. I got sucked into the plot, eagerly turning pages. Good use of detail made the story so vivid.
This was probably the most fun I’ve had reading a WJW book. He’s a good craftsman, but I’ve found the other works of his that I’ve read a lot darker than this. While there were plenty of scheming and v This turned out to be a really good choice for a nervous time in which I needed distraction and for weather that was just too bloody hot to do much of anything else but read after getting home from work. I got sucked into the plot, eagerly turning pages. Good use of detail made the story so vivid.
This was probably the most fun I’ve had reading a WJW book. He’s a good craftsman, but I’ve found the other works of his that I’ve read a lot darker than this. While there were plenty of scheming and violence and tense situations in this, there was still a feeling of hope to it; and ultimately there was a positive outcome for Dagmar, at least.
At the beginning, I’d wondered if Dagmar was going to be one of those tough Teflon, emotionless chicks. I like female characters with strength who can take charge mentally and/or physically, but I don’t like characters who are emotionally flat. Although Dagmar was smart and very resourceful, she also displayed authentic human emotion. She had moments in which she feared for her own safety and catalogued her limited number of self-defense skills, but seeing people around her get hurt also upset her. When people died trying to mount the operation to rescue her in Indonesia, she felt guilty and sad that people died on her account. She was truly grateful and impressed with the people who did manage to help her get clear of a perilous situation. I also liked how she was steadfast in her resistance of her ex-fling’s attempts to regain her interest after she found out he was married. And her knowledge of SFF stuff was great.
I don’t want to post major spoilers, so I’ll just say that I figured out one major plot point and thought I knew the identity of the bad guy (although I had part of it wrong) by page 290. But it didn’t spoil the book for me; there were plenty of juicy twists and turns. I just felt pleased that I’d picked up on some clues. And the more I thought about it, the more troubled I was about a particular character being a sociopath and the depths of the scheming. Watching someone pretending to care about someone else while plotting to kill them is chilling!
The pop culture references--including Pinky & the Brain, Star Wars (and not only the mainstream movies--someone has a roommate called Jacen, after the EU book character), Marvel, Harry Potter, Terry Pratchett, and more--throughout were priceless.
Chapter Six is titled “This Is Not the Bat Cave.”
Then there are these two passages as further examples:

[Name redacted] had left the real world altogether and now lived somewhere in supervillain territory. He was Magneto. He was Lex Luthor. He was Doctor Doom.
He was the Napoleon of Crime.
When the hell had [he] found time to develop this secret life? …She’d seen him nearly every day, and she’d never once seen him meeting with the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants.
Probably the meetings took place in his secret base in a dormant volcano. --pg 291

Out-of-work actors walked up and down the sidewalks dressed as superheroes and offered to let visitors take their picture for a small fee.
Fly this bomb to where it belongs, Tony Stark, she thought, but Tony was busy posing with a couple of kids from the Midwest and failed to hear her mental command. --pg 442

I’ve never been into role-playing games like D&D--I tried a couple of times, but I’m too much of a control freak and find the minutiae of it boring; but the book’s narrative made the talk of games accessible. I have participated in online forums/chat rooms, played some word games online, and participated in ‘continue the story’ type things, so that helped me relate to the story. I could very much relate to the stuff about writing that’s part of Dagmar’s life. The conversations among the Our Reality Network members reminded me of real things I’ve seen. It seems every group as at least one know-it-all, the moderator-personality type, and the gullible types. I liked many of the helpful gamers/online chatters featured in the book--obsessed with their games, one-upping each other in that way nerds do…yet earnest and helpful when something real that actually mattered came up.
I can see the appeal of Alternate Reality Games (ARGs), but I’ve never had the time/inclination to participate--and I tend to be suspicious of strangers. I wouldn’t trust whoever’s running the game to be entirely benign. It would be all too easy for someone to get participants to unwittingly contribute to a destructive or criminal act as depicted in the book.
I was pleased to see that there are 2 more Dagmar books and have put them on my to-read list. ...more

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Sep 17, 2015 Tasula rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

This is the third WJ Williams book I have read - the others being Implied Spaces and The Fourth Wall. The story precedes the events of The Fourth Wall, and I probably would have understood that book better if I had read This is Not a Game first. There are 4 main characters in the book- all former college mates who participated in gaming, and whose paths later diverged. Three are successful and continue some association- Dagmar works as a fiction writer for games for one of Charlie's companies. A ...more

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May 06, 2009 Kelly rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Set in a near future, this is basically the story of an ARG (Alternate Reality Game) that not only touches the fringe of reality but seeps into it, by design of the puppetmasters (game moderators). It didn't start out this way, but a collection of events and a couple of experiments push it over the edge until the game becomes literally an all out effort to save the world.

I loved reading this book. The writing was effortless and entertaining, as were the characters and the plots. I had so much fu ...more

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Mar 19, 2012 Kristin rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: science-fiction

I flew through this book. It had me hooked on page one and, thanks to a four hour flight, kept me engrossed to the end. I thought the plot was deftly woven, the use of an on-line role playing game in real-time/real-world was fascinating. I liked the murder-mystery elements of betrayal, revenge and double revenge. I liked the way world wide financial elements were manipulated on a more intimate level, shall we say. I can totally see the self replicating software happening at some point in the fut ...more

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Apr 03, 2009 Liviu rated it did not like it · review of another edition

Shelves: genre-sf, 2009_release_read, read_2009

I love most of WJW novels and some like Aristoi, Metropolitan, City on Fire are among my top sff books, with Dread Empire and Implied Spaces close also, but sadly this one should be entitled "Not a Novel"

I fast plowed through it to see if it has anything of interest to me; it was just unreadable and boring - artificial, could not connect with the characters or the setting, seemed just a "game" so to speak, not "real"

A while ago I would have shrugged and said, well, near-future thrillers are not ...more

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Jan 09, 2018 Mike Shirar rated it really liked it

Really enjoyed this one- especially interesting reading in 2017, when several of the near-future predictions about our online lives have come and, in the case of ARGs, seemingly gone already.

Fun mystery/thriller also featuring a great exploration of how technology impacts our lives, good and bad, and how to live ethically in an online world. To be clear, none of this is preachy, heavy-handed, or at all artificial.

Also enjoy the fact that all the pop culture reference are now 8 years out of date ...more

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Jan 04, 2016 Allan Gonzalez rated it did not like it · review of another edition

TINAGB

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May 27, 2017 Tomer rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: cyberpunk

What happens when on-line gaming and real life intertwine into a single narrative. The author merges together influences both of the game \ gamers affecting the real world and real world affecting the game. There are some interesting concepts with some nice nostalgic memories of when the games RPG etc started.

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Oct 29, 2019 Sherron rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: techno-thriller

This is the first novel I’ve read by this author.

The first thing I liked about it is the orienting use of chapter titles, and it was fun that each chapter title was preceded by the phrase “This Is Not a....[insert word],” which echoes the phraseology of the book’s title “This Is Not a Game.” Clever. A lot of novels that meander on interminably without a specific reason to do so just irritate me as thematically wrong and as sloppy story telling/editing. I strongly like chapters and chapter title ...more

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Feb 05, 2012 Marcelo rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: rwr

This Is Not A Game by Walter Jon Williams was a book that I thoroughly enjoyed and one which I will continue to explore, as there are more books in the series. Exploring the experiences of Dagmar, a young woman employed by a video game company, it is more than a good read, but really encourages us to explore the role that social media plays in our lives, and how we are affected by it.

The first story in the book, as there are several, takes place at the very beginning, as Dagmar is trapped in Ind This Is Not A Game by Walter Jon Williams was a book that I thoroughly enjoyed and one which I will continue to explore, as there are more books in the series. Exploring the experiences of Dagmar, a young woman employed by a video game company, it is more than a good read, but really encourages us to explore the role that social media plays in our lives, and how we are affected by it.

The first story in the book, as there are several, takes place at the very beginning, as Dagmar is trapped in Indonesia, as a conflict has torn apart the country, and the Indonesian dollar has dropped completely in value, a product of Chinese inflation. Dagmar, who works for a billion-dollar company as the story writer for video-games, is trapped in the Royal Jakarta Hotel, and she must use her followers on a social media site to escape from the hands of angry rebels. It is this first story which made me enjoy it very much, as it was a lead-in to the other story. I find that often times, novels lead into their stories too quickly, and there is not enough time to establish the story, nor the characters, but This is Not A Game did the exact opposite. By using the first fourth of the book for a lead-in, the second story, a "Who Dun' It?" essentially, did not need to set up the characters nor their relationships, and so once the second story started, I was able to feel like a part of the action, as a true reader, as I did not have to stop to know what was going on, as it was explained already.

Another reason for my love of the book was the overall reality that it provided, unlike the book I read before. In Being, my previous RWR book, it was rather science-fiction-y, and Kevin, the protagonist, had an alien machine inside of him. However, This Is Not A Game was extremely realistic, and clearly was well researched, as it explored what life would be life in the following years. The conflict in Indonesia, in the beginning of the book was particularly realistic, as it explored how mass-production in China and lack of regulation in the United States destroyed the world, and caused civil-unrest in Indonesia, leading to the mass-genocide of Indians and Chinese in Jakarta. Because the book was this realistic, and I was able to connect to it, and see how the world could change if we keep on our constant course.

One part of the book that I did not enjoy, however, was the descriptions of some of the technology and ideas used, which I did not follow. While it came off a simply a nerdy-book, it seemed as though you had to know a bit more about social media than the average Joe to truly understand what was going on, which at some points I did not appreciate, as there were certain computer programming ideas that I did not follow. However, these parts were few and far between, and I did enjoy the book, because of the overall descriptions and reality, and how I could connect to the novel because it described social media so accurately.

...more

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Aug 12, 2009 Bonnie rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Recommends it for: gamers!

Shelves: destruction, fiction, page-turner, strong-heroine, los-angeles, mystery, science-fiction, realistic-fiction, economics, gaming

When Dagmar lands in Jakarta, she finds her connecting flight has been canceled... along with every other flight out of the country. The currency is under attack and a revolution is underway. Luckily, Dagmar is the major producer/writer for Great Big Idea, a company that specialized in creating ARGs: alternate reality games. Her boss is a multimillionaire and he's determined to get Dagmar out of the country and back to safety, where she can start writing the next big game. When some of the more When Dagmar lands in Jakarta, she finds her connecting flight has been canceled... along with every other flight out of the country. The currency is under attack and a revolution is underway. Luckily, Dagmar is the major producer/writer for Great Big Idea, a company that specialized in creating ARGs: alternate reality games. Her boss is a multimillionaire and he's determined to get Dagmar out of the country and back to safety, where she can start writing the next big game. When some of the more conventional rescue attempts fail, Dagmar turns to the online gaming community to help her.

Fast forward to a few months later, with Dagmar back in LA and starting a brand new ARG. As the game gets underway, one of Dagmar's longtime friends is murdered. Can she once again call on gamers to help solve this murder? And, as Dagmar digs deeper to solve this mystery, other countries come under attack, just like Jakarta. The line between game and reality begins to blur... however, This Is Not A Game.

Okay, this book is difficult to sum up, particularly without sounding cheesy. Williams does an excellent job between joining online games with reality, as well as recognizing the strange potential of massive amounts of gamers. I think he creates a story that will appeal to classic RPGers as well as those who've only gamed on a console or computer. I liked Dagmar - she was resourceful, funny, and creative.

If I have any complaints for this book, it's that it felt like there were a few loose ends or unnecessary characters/plot bits. The transition from the chapters in Jakarta to the start of The Long Night of Briana Hall was abrupt, and the ending didn't have quite the punch I expected... or maybe I was just thinking there was going to be another plot twist. The moments with the gamers are gold... I wish there were more (why is it I hate reading message boards in real life, but enjoy them in a story?). And there's just something thoroughly enjoyable about a plot involving what happens when gold-farming goes so wrong.

If you love gaming, whether it's on paper and involves d20s or if it's on a console or involves being in character, this is a book you'll probably enjoy. I'm glad it was recommended to me! ...more

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Aug 19, 2013 Jacob rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: science_fiction, from_library

A decent semi-detective story that gets pretty good once it finally heads in for the main plot a third of the way through. The author uses the first third to convey the impact of what the story means to the people of the world who are not directly involved, but it made it hard to get into the book and could have been a LOT shorter. The book is a bit like Halting State in terms of being about mixing games and reality until it's hard to tell the difference, although maybe this is the flip side of ...more

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Feb 21, 2012 danni rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Shelves: avoid

unfortunate cover images... and catchphrase... but hey, i'll give a shot at a book following the folly of rich white ARG (alternate reality game- for the un-initiated) producers as the real world goes to shit around them.

and frankly it was the closest book to my backpack this morning that i hadn't already read. seriously considering making a book cover for this though, the cover is honestly embarrassing.

thoughts after finishing this book:
the author has some decent ideas and has some insight into ...more

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Sep 11, 2014 Ethan Bernauer rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Recommends it for: Anyone

In my opinion, this was a very good book. The title lured me in a little bit. I thought that this would be a strange type of book since it was about a video game, but it actually wasn't that bad. I was very surprised by the ending because it took a sharp turn and changed what I thought was going to happen. Many parts of this book are suspenseful and keep you drawn in to where you don't want to put it down.

This book is about the main character, Dagmar, who, at the beginning of the book, is stuck ...more

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Apr 01, 2011 Monique rated it really liked it · review of another edition

This was a fast, engaging read that, I thought, got internet culture mostly right (although I haven't played any Alternate Reality games, so I can't speak to that aspect). I had trouble putting it down. There was insufficient denouement, but on the other hand, it had more of a wrap-up than most Neal Stephenson books have. Unfortunately, a major plot point hinged on a completely ridiculous premise - that when you have a list of many thousands of items, and you have a program that acts on one of t ...more

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Apr 06, 2018 Craig rated it really liked it · review of another edition

All of the chapter and section titles in This Is Not a Game begin with the phrase "This Is Not a..." so I'll have to preface my observation with the comment that this is not a science fiction novel. It is a very good suspense/thriller with a little genre content, but... The book has a ten-year-old copyright, and it's closer now to reality than I imagine even the author could have imagined. It's a good murder mystery with more social-media-community influence than anything else I've read that com ...more

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Mar 12, 2009 Bruce rated it did not like it · review of another edition

Shelves: sf-fantasy, odd-thoughts

one star for a book that I started and did not finish. Nor did I get very far. Just not interested in the premise or feel of the writing, though I normally like WJW.

odd thoughts:

I am beginning to develop this theory that Charles Stross and Walter Jon Williams are working together behind the scenes.

The description of this book looks like a different take on the same or eerily familiar universe as Stross's Halting State.

Likewise, Implied Spaces grappled with the same ideas behind Stross's Glassho ...more

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Apr 18, 2009 Mark rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Great new story from Walter Jon Williams involving four role-playing game players who meet in college. One goes on to be a successful entrepreneur, one becomes a venture capitalist, one a game designer, and one a bitter burnout. The story revolves around the games they create for a living and what happens when one of them is unexpectedly murdered.

The thing I liked about this story most is that it blurred the lines between fantasy and reality. The games produced in this book involve real-world ac ...more

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Apr 01, 2009 Chris rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: sci-fi

I was involved in the XBOX 360 ARG the year before the release. I know some what of this gaming style. I find it fascinating and highly marketable.

Walter Jon Williams is know for his high-tech "cyberpunk" novels. This is not one of those novels. Which I found very nice. Call it a techno-thriller or whatever, but it was a good read.

The only complaint was the plot became a little transparent by the end of the story. Though it didn't detract from the read. I found I empathized with the characters ...more

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Apr 12, 2011 Rob rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: random-comments-review

...If you enjoy a good (techno) thriller this book is as good as it gets. Events frequently outpace the main character keep her, and to an extend the reader, off balance. Williams captures the paranoia, desperations and frustration of the main character very well, without making her completely helpless. Dagmar is used to being in control of the game, when she eventually cuts the strings that move her the result in interesting, unexpected even. In short, I thought This Is Not a Game was a very en ...more

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Sep 15, 2016 Kate rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: 2016-summer-olympic-challenge

Dagmar is a “puppet-master”, a designer, author, and producer of wildly popular on-line games in which millions of participants solve the puzzles she devises. After he latest game has successfully conclude with a wedding in India she heads back home to California with a stopover in Jakarta. That quick layover turns into a weeks long nightmare as the collapse of the Indonesian currency has led directly to a bloody coup with Dagmar trapped in the capital city.

What starts out as a fairly straightf ...more

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Jan 15, 2012 Laz the Sailor rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: scifi

Dagmar writes online games for social media websites. She's in Indonesia to promote her latest global game, and gets trapped by local insurrection. The really clever part is how she convinces her loyal Users to "play the game" and rescue her. The premise is cool, and the execution is very good. Dagmar's terror and intense creativity under pressure are quite visceral. I have read the sequel Deep State, and it has more character development, but is not as intense as this one. ...more

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Feb 01, 2016 ambyr rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Shelves: formatㅡaudiobook, protagonistㅡfemale, authorㅡmale, acquiredㅡfrom-work, i-am-not-the-right-audience, nyr2016, genreㅡthriller

First off: This Is Not Science Fiction.

The basic idea, about using the participants in an ARG as mechanical Turks to solve real-life problems, was a clever one. But I'm dubious about computers or international finance working quite as Williams describes it, and the characters were flat. No one seemed to have any life--any hobbies, any friends, any past or future--outside of what the plot required.

I suppose Dagmar does have an implied future, since there are sequels, but I won't be reading them. ...more

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Play Book Tag: This is Not a Game by Walter Jon Williams - 4.5 stars	3	15	Jul 23, 2016 03:15AM

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About Walter Jon Williams

Walter Jon Williams

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Walter Jon Williams has published twenty novels and short fiction collections. Most are science fiction or fantasy -Hardwired, Voice of the Whirlwind, Aristoi, Metropolitan, City on Fire to name just a few - a few are historical adventures, and the most recent, The Rift, is a disaster novel in which "I just basically pound a part of the planet down to bedrock." And that's just the opening chapters ...more

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Quotes from This is Not a Game

“When you revealed that the Rani was in fact the Nagi," Charlie said, "the players collectively pissed their pants."
"I'd rather they creamed their jeans.” — 1 likes

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