Olympus

 (Editor's Note:  Please welcome to the Booket Blog, our good friend Benjamin Reich. He enjoys writing and offers keen literary analysis. He will be posting on the blog more frequently, so that means more content for you the reader! All right on to the article.)
 When Karl Huber decides to run away from home he makes the decision to go to another world, a virtual reality video game world. Now his family and some newfound friends have to track him down in the video game world to find out where he is in the real one, all while facing the perils and other players in the world that is Olympus.

   This is the premise given to us in Scott Somerville’s book Olympus.  Having read this book twice I can say that I thoroughly enjoy it. In the book the video game Olympus is played inside of a cyber-suit which transports the player into the video game world. This allows the player to be fully immersed in the videogame world, and in the case of some more advanced cyber-suits even live in it. This alone brings up some interesting questions about how real video games should be, especially since technology similar to this is already being developed.  The book also brings out intriguing questions surrounding alternate reality, about the morals involved in a fake world where there are no “real” consequences.

 

    As far as negatives go at times it can feel a bit “preachy” against video games and a few other things, but for the most part there are two sides to the argument. Sometimes the dialogue can fall a bit flat, but for the most part it’s well written.  One of the biggest details I noted both times I read that just kind of bothered me is that when they are in Olympus only one of the characters has a suit that can simulate pain, yet there are a few instances where it seems the other characters are in pain. For example at one point a few characters are underwater and it make mention several times that their lungs were bursting, that just makes me think “, Why can’t they just take a breath in the real world?”  At moments like that it just kind of takes me out of the moment.

    Overall it is a good read with well written characters, intriguing story arcs, as well as interesting looks between the real world and the video game one. I would definitely recommend this book to anyone who wants to give it a read.

-Benjamin-