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This follow-up to Cressman's Reality 2048: Watching Big Mother includes a large cast of varied characters. Not only do Vera and Chase return from the earlier book, both stuck inside their entertainment homes with no outside contact, but there is also a young orphan named Ellen who is surprisingly raised offline by a nun, a teenager named Oscar who sells black market cigarettes and is raising his precocious sister, Luella, and a couple of high-ranking executives who believe their posh lifestyle is well-earned because they are secretly working against the system from the inside. Oscar indulges in a wild idea which leads him to attempt skiing in reality. This adventure will lead him to smash his VR implant and meet Ellen. Setting off a chain of events, a huge mega-philanthropic organization, whose ultimate goal is more consumption, winds up financing actual gardens on a bombed-out area that used to be Ellen's virtual child-rearing center. Oscar decides he should help Luella disconnect more often, while Ellen begins to think more seriously about finding her parents. When Luella beats another online player, Chase, and wins a bet for an old but real motorcycle, all the divergent characters' lives become entangled.
Much like the first novel, this dystopian tale leans heavily on the influence of works like Orwell's 1984 and Vonnegut's short story "Harrison Bergeron." Each presents a future where the individual is overruled by the ruling whole, and each is written with loads of satire. This second book also seems to be heavily influenced by Stephenson's Snow Crash. Both novels emphasize a future where virtual reality becomes a larger part of most characters' lives than the offline world around them. Governments are fractured, and corporations hold the most power. Additionally, this book features more action than the first, which is a characteristic Snow Crash also has in abundance. Where Stephenson's book focuses on a malicious and deadly virus, Cressman's work focuses more on breaking down virtual reality addiction and attempting to convince people to interact with each other and the natural world around them. Each book also features dystopian and slightly futuristic takes on transportation, electronic currencies, a black market where physical items are the products, and a metaverse built much like a modern MMO, where avatars are status symbols and consumption reigns. Interestingly, hackers become more like heroes than antiheroes in worlds where Big Brother is always online and watching.
Cressman's writing is sharp, often layered with quotable lines and interesting parodies. It was good in the first book, but it has improved in this one. The introduction of a larger cast of characters works well for him, and the book is even more engaging as a result. He takes a few additional risks in this book, and they pay off for the reader. There are still aspects that may raise some eyebrows, such as a too-easy conclusion and unrealistic recovery from people who have been strapped to chairs for nearly two decades, among other minor issues. However, not only is this book easy to recommend to anyone who enjoyed the predecessor, but it is also a book to recommend to anyone who enjoys dystopian and speculative fiction, although reading the first book will make the overall experience more rewarding.
RECOMMENDED by the US Review