Well, it's called Epic...

Well, it’s been a while, so I have about a million things I want to write about. Be excited; I have an hour and a half break on Fridays that I will most likely be spending in the Library every week, so I might actually blog more often. I also have a Creative Writing class this semester, so I might have more to write about.

Seeing as I have so much to say, I’ll break it up a bit, so for today, I just want to talk about a book I read yesterday. The book was Epic by Conor Kostick. In this world, violence has been banned and anyone who is accused of violence is exiled.

SPOILER ALERT (if you ever plan on reading it)

The book takes place in a community of former refugees from an extremely violent Earth. In this world, their economy, government and all around society takes place in what is essentially an MMORGP, called Epic. All disputes are settled there. The story goes on about a boy named Erik whose family starts out threatened with relocation, then after his father appears in Epic (which he hasn’t done in 20 years) to fight for their right to stay and also for the community to get more solar panels, it is discovered that his father is an exile, because he once punched a guy who was attempting to hurt the woman who became Erik’s mother.  Erik creates a character with whom he place the game the way it was originally intended to be played: as a game. Then he teams up with his friends to defeat a dragon (apparently an almost unheard of feat, especially if accomplished by children/teenagers) and they become wealthy overnight, as wealth in the game means wealth in the real world. They begin to fight against Central Allocations (the government of the world) to gain Erik’s father back and end up reaching an endgame Self-Destruct button which wipes the game from their computers and essentially destroys their government.

So…The first thing I want to say is who designs an MMO—that was originally intended just to be a game—with a Self-Destruct button?! I realize it was essential to the plot, in the end, but seriously, who would do that? So, the first strike against the story was that it was unrealistic in the sense that no game designer would set up their game to be wiped from memory if someone completes the Epicus Ultima.

Another problem the book had was that it felt more like a string of circumstances than a plot. The author wanted them to fight a dragon, so they fought a dragon. He wanted Erik to get appendicitis, so he did. They went on an ocean journey, met a vampyre (his spelling of the word), and fought in an epic battle against all sorts of evil creatures. Their goals were constantly changing, and that was annoying.

However, I still enjoyed the book. I’m not entirely sure why yet, since there were so many things in it that bugged me. Characters were typical; plot was not well constructed; goals weren’t clear. Yet I enjoyed it. I think it was possibly just one of those books that you get into just to get away. There’s something about reading about someone’s adventures in an RPG that sets you (or me at least) off daydreaming. It’s the sort of story where Mary Sues are allowed to live.

Apparently, there is a sequel to this book called Saga. Will I read it when it comes out? Maybe. It won’t be something I search out, but if I find it, I do have questions. For instance, who was it that Rangok, the Big Bad Guy, murdered? It was mentioned that he killed someone, but never who it was. Also, why was he still afraid, after essentially becoming the most powerful player in the game (and thus the most powerful person in the Real world) of harming real people? I have to wonder.

Oh, yeah…the main character? He didn’t kill the bad guy. The game did.


EDIT: I remember now who the BBG murdered. But I'm not going to say.