The Player of Games

Stopped reading after 1/3 maybe. I did not enjoy the writing style. Even if I tough this was a good story, I could not bear to read this any longer.

The book starts on a convoluted scene of some sort of game being played. I could not find any interest in this. There is no attempt to create an empathy for the protagonist. He is a guy who plays games. He is the best at it. What games? All sort of games, none one we know of course.

I don't know if reading the first book would have helped, but the lack of context was very disturbant. What are drones? Why are they relevant? Do people own them? How close to human is acceptable for them to behave? Do they share the same status as living things?

The main plot, which takes a while to get at, revolves around this player deciding to cheat at a game to achieve a very hard to achieve kind of victory. Why does he do it? Because. And then he is caught on tape by an evil drone (do drones have morality?). However, tapes are easy to temper with, an no one believes in them. This drone just happened to have the one kind of tape that people do believe in.

Even if this latter becomes explained, as a rouse to get the player to go to this years away world to play this life altering game, it is way too weak of a plot. The drone also seems to be omnipotent and omniscient. The threat of releasing the tape seems really meaningless compared to that.

I fully expect the book to waste many pages on the description of playing an arbitrary game which I care none about.