Blue sky, green trees

The author lays it on a bit thick, but it's still a fun read.

Just...kind of...boring.

I'm not into video games and don't really know much about them, so if I hadn't been given this book as a Christmas present I never would have known about it. However, I was game (ha!) to give it a try.

In general, it was a fun read with a good mix of action and heart. It definitely will speak more to people who like video games because it is basically a book version of a video game, complete with loads of stats, loot boxes, and lots of gaming terms like NPC, debuff, grinding, and mob (it doesn't mean a group). The book's feeling is weird because it's kind of repetitive - fighting monsters, going through loot boxes & achievements, repeat - but it also has variety in the interactions and encounters Carl and Donut have aside from the monsters. The descriptions of the various loot and spells and monsters was a bit grating, and I started skipping over that stuff because they tell you about it again when the stuff gets used or when the fight with a monster gets going. One of the biggest weaknesses of the book is that it's the first in a series of 8 (as of 2026), which takes away any suspense about if they'll survive the battles they face in this first book.

So will I read the second book? Meh, probably not. Glad I read this first one, but the plot and characters just aren't compelling enough to make me come back for more.

Somehow I had the idea that this book would be more of a portrait of a selection of books that American soldiers were reading during WWII, with anecdotes and information and quotes from soldiers about each selected book. I had planned to use it as a curated reading list, to be honest. Well that's not what this book is about at all, thankfully, because what it actually talks about is something that I would never have imagined: a program for getting books into the hands of every soldier, books of all types and all across the globe. It talks about how this program was seen as vital to the war effort, and the obstacles that had to be overcome to make it a success (and it was a runaway success).

This book was a real eye-opener for me on multiple facets of WWII, both for the soldiers and for those back home. And thanks to the handy appendix listing every single book that was part of this program, and the anecdotes about individual titles sprinkled throughout the book, I do have quite a nice reading list to dig into.