This was one of the worst books for me too. Doubly so considering the hype and online reviews it’s gotten! The plot was just a big string of soap-opera-level contrived situations and cliches; the characters’ personalities were inconsistent part-to-part and wholly unconvincing; the writing was patronizing and pretentious, making sure to tell you the point of each episode in case you missed the generic, heavily telegraphed moral message.

Also, the book’s treatment of video games and game development was just bizarre. There were some interesting ideas—one of which was apparently lifted from Brenda Romero with no attribution—but the gaming particulars were often either superficial or didn’t make sense. There was a chapter towards the end that was supposed to be describing a game; it was a neat idea at a high level, but the execution was not even wrong. What that chapter was describing was, in a fundamental way, simply not how games work because it would simply make no sense for games to work that way. And I say this as somebody who is very open to experimental and indie games!

It’s always wild to read books where there’s such a delta between popular perception—so many people online gush about Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow as if it were the best work of literature they had ever read—and actuality. Hell, I understand when it goes the other way around; some books are very much an acquired taste. But how does something so bad in every relevant dimension get such praise?

I did rather like the cover design though, so there’s that :)