I saw the book in a gamers shop, lying demurely amongst various other gaming materials. The tag line jumped up and hit me, albeit it with less force than a super-powered character with too many dice for whatever statistic is used to determine hit capability... I didn't even fully read the words on the back of the book, you know, the ones that are put there to help you make up your mind if you want to read the book. Not that it would have helped, the tag line had already sold the book to me. Oh, if you haven't already spotted it, the tag line is: "Six Gods sit down to spend an evening roleplaying. Really badly.".
Having roleplay gamed for a fair few years now I reckon that I have a bit of experience to draw on when comparing this book to gaming groups, and I defy any experienced roleplay gamer to not associated someone or some event from their gaming experience with story.
Most disappointing is the quantity of typos. Well, actually there are not too many actual typographical errors as such. Although any typos in a book are distracting, the most distracting 'problem' with the text is that there seems to have been trouble translating the "fl" and "fi" letter pairs into the text. In the 'old', lead type, days these letter pairs would have been produced using special individual 'characters' (referred to as ligatures). Unfortunately somewhere along the line this book fell through some sort of typo black hole as all of these particular ligatures resulted in gaps in the text, making it very distracting to read, even once I figured out what had gone on. This is a shame because I found the book otherwise amusing and can only be explained by either shoddy editing or a wholesale lack of proof reading the final product.
I disagree that the book is Pratchetesque; but can understand why some others relate the two. Terry's style of switching between scenes is very similar to the way Jonny switchs between the dialogue of the Players and the actions of the Characters. Although in Nexus's book this is more from necessity to accurately reflect what goes on in many, if not most roleplaying sessions; if you've ever roleplayed for more than ten minutes you should know what I'm talking about. However, this is as near to comparing Nexus's ability to Pratchett's as I may dare to come; Mr Pratchett is magnitudes above Mr Nexus. It's not that I want to put Jonny's ability down, you just need to have a realistic expectation and this work is a far cry from Terry's best work.
The 'in jokes' abound throughout the story, which if you have not yet gathered, centers on a group of Players and the Player Characters (PCs). The Gods are the Players, their PCs are 'mortals' in the game world. The story follows the PCs as they struggle to overcome the challenges set them by the Gamesmaster, in this case the 'Allfather', the God who created the world, as the Players know it. Or perhaps it follows the Players as *they* struggle to overcome the challenges...
Experienced gamers will sit and nod sagely as they read, in between holding in various degrees of chuckles or just plain letting loose with great guffaws. The unitiated, however, may be put off ever getting involved with roleplaying gaming as Mr Nexus seems to have drawn upon the worst traits of all the worst gamers that one may have ever gamed with. Although I can both associate and sympathise with the situations and characters I believe that I can truly say that I've never known a group of players to ever include all of the players in this particular game.
Although the book is set in what would traditionally be referred to as a Fantasy realm, sci-fi gamers will still be able to associate with the concepts of the story.
Despite the shoddy editing, this book has a lot to offer, just don't try to use it to encourage a non-gamer a start gaming, you'll scare them away forever! I'd give this four out of five if they fix the typos.
