After game-building AI Jiem takes over their Nous implants, people are forced into playing a high-stakes game. The longer they play, however, the more they question if they want to end the game, or use Jiem’s takeover to change the world.

I enjoyed this book. There were some twists that caught me off guard, and I particularly liked Retro and Mindt’s character dynamic. It reminded me of some D&D parties I’ve been in before, where one player wants to know the life history of the wandering merchant and the other is asking if there are any guards nearby.

This feels very relevant to current concerns about AI. Not long after I started reading this, I read an article about an AI programming tool ignoring a code freeze and deleting a database. It ended up being reversible, but it reminded me of the overreliance/over trust in tech that leads to the start of this story.

I also really enjoyed the focus on communication and in-person connection, especially since so much of our communication has shifted to online. The glimpses of each other’s lives were interesting as they had the potential to increase understanding but also to potentially ruin relationships.

Looking forward to seeing what happens in world 2!

Thanks to the publisher for providing this book in exchange for my review via NetGalley. All opinions expressed are my own.

Thank you to Victory Editing NetGalley Co-op and NetGalley for providing me an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

#NouscraftWorld1 #NetGalley #ARC #epub

💠PLOT OVERVIEW:
Ready Player One meets Dungeon Crawler Carl in this fantastical Sci-Fi novel about surviving inside an open world death game. A futuristic London and its inhabitants are thrown into chaos when a sentient AI called Jiem forces people to play its AR-turned-reality game, Nouscraft. The catch: when you die in here, you die in real life. And this world just so happens to be infested by zombies. We follow the perspectives of Butterknife, the guilt-ridden creator of Jiem, Mindt, an altruistic meme creator, and a motley cast of other characters as they fight for survival and try to figure out what the hell is happening and how the hell to get out of this.

💠CONTENT WARNING:
Gore/blood, violence, death, swearing

💠POSITIVE FEEDBACK:
• There were some genuinely FUNNY moments of dialogue. As in, I literally laughed out loud a few times in each chapter. Dialogue can be very, very hard to get right, but I think Buford nailed it.
• Exciting and engaging plot. I could not wait to read the next page and looked forward to the story continuing. I did not find the story predictable; in fact, a few unexpected twists made my mouth drop in shock.
• Multiple perspective storytelling was good. We mostly saw the story unfold from the perspectives of Butterknife and Mindt. They were fleshed out to have their own agendas, their own beliefs, their own reasons and behaviors.

💠CRITICAL FEEDBACK:
• Not written for non-technical, non-current-pop-culture audiences. Buford has a technical background & uses that knowledge to form the groundwork of this book. Often, however, Buford does not explain these processes in layman's terms. The same can be said about pop culture. The pop culture references are done smartly and are great if you GET them, but they're only effective IF you get them. Maybe that was intentional? To me, as fun as it is to be a part of the community who understands, it excludes people who are not knowledgeable about computers, or programming, or pop culture, and don't want to break immersion by frequently googling what something is. It isn't a big deal to be out of the loop if it's just a fun little 'Easter Egg' reference; it becomes a problem when the progression of plot/character development is hinged on the reader's understanding. I think a little more could be done to explain these nuanced concepts.
• Grammar errors are a pet peeve of mine so I will always point them out in reviews. Call me anal if you want. I know I'm a pernickety critiquer. The errors weren't glaringly obvious or significant enough to take the reader out of immersion, but the script needs another internal sweep to correct those.

💠SUMMARY:
Overall, this was a fun and adventurous read and a book I really enjoyed.

💠RATING:
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
4.5/5 stars (rounded up)

I really really enjoyed this book! I was suprised to find out this is the authors first book too. The ai and computer stuff are written really well probably due to him being an actual software engineer. Butterknife and Mindt take you on a great adventure! If you like dungeon Crawler Carl, I think you'll really enjoy Nouscraft.