Zoey Is Too Drunk for This Dystopia (Zoey Ashe #3)

by Jason Pargin

When I was a kid, my dad forbid us from playing any video games. Not for the usual reasons—because they were addictive or a waste of time—he said games teach a really bad lesson, which is that every problem has some neat solution. You enter a room, there’s a door, that means there must be a key that opens that door, and there’s a sword in that room and that must mean you’ll need it to kill the dragon later. But in real life, you don’t get that. You think there’s some perfect way for society to handle sex work, or policing, or just vice in general. That it’s just a lock that needs the right key. The real world isn’t like that, it’s all just a bunch of trade-offs. If you legalize drugs, you get addicts in the park and ruined lives. If you do prohibition, you get jails packed with traffickers and black markets ruled by whoever is the best at murder. You’re driving yourself crazy asking where’s the exact solution, as if the universe is presenting all of this as a series of obstacles to test you. When in reality, all you can do is manage the problems and minimize damage.”