Book Summary: Sadie and Sam met when they were only kids and quickly bonded over their shared love of video games. The novel follows these once-estranged friends as they reunite to create a successful video game company, all while navigating the world of friendship, love, and tragedy.
Book Review: I absolutely loved this book. I didn’t expect to, and though it’s not my usual genre I found it extremely creative, original, and well written. The characters are so complex and their relationships feel authentic, something I don’t come across a lot. Often, relationships in literature are romanticized which makes it difficult to believe that the fictional universe exists. This gave me a newfound appreciation for video games and I honestly fell in love with the characters’ minds. The writing itself isn’t heavy and difficult to interpret, yet it’s eloquent enough to set it apart from many popular novels today. There are also several unique sections and chapters that find ways to creatively integrate video game-style elements. Finally, there are many symbols and parallels so powerful that they forced me to pause, close the book, and stop and think.
Quotes: “This is what time travel is. It’s looking at a person, and seeing them in the present and the past, concurrently. And that mode of transport only worked with those one had known a significant time.” “He had learned to tolerate the sometimes-painful present by living in the future.” “What a world, Sadie thought. People once made glass sculptures of decay, and they put these sculptures in museums. How strange and beautiful human beings are. And how fragile.” “’Even if what he says is true, I think it’s still a victory,’ she said. ‘Because she won on this day, with this particular set of people. We can never know what else might have happened had other competitors been there. The Russian girls could have won, or they could have gotten jet-lagged and choked.’ Anna shrugged. ‘And that is the truth of any game-it can only exist at the moment that it is being played. It’s the same with being an actor. In the end, all we can ever know is the game that was played, in the only world that we know.’” “In games, the thing that matters most is the order of things. The game has an algorithm, but the player also must create a play algorithm in order to win. There is an order to any victory. There is an optimal way to play any game. Sam, in the silent months after Anna’s death, would obsessively replay this scene in his head. If she doesn’t take the job on Press That Button! and if Anna can’t afford to buy the new car. If Anna buys the new car but drives directly home after dinner. If the first Anna Lee doesn’t jump from that building and if Anna never comes to Los Angeles. If Anna doesn’t stop driving after she hits the coyote. If Anna finds the emergency lights. If Anna never sleeps with George. If Sam is never born. There are, he determines, infinite ways his mother doesn’t die that night and only one way she does.” “’The twist of Dead Sea is that the Wraith did not survive the plane crash. She’s a zombie, too. She just doesn’t know it yet. So in essence, she’s spent the whole game killing her own kind.’” “Sam’s doctor said to him, ‘The good news is that the pain is in your head.’ But I am in my head, Sam thought.” “Long relationships might be richer, but relatively brief, relatively uncomplicated encounters with interesting people could be lovely as well. Every person you knew, every person you loved even did not have to consume you for the time to have been worthwhile.” “’It isn’t a sadness, but a joy that we don’t do the same things for the length of our lives.’” “Sam used to say that Marx was the most fortunate person he had ever met-he was lucky with lovers, in business, in looks, in life. But the longer Sadie knew Marx, the more she thought Sam hadn’t truly understood the nature of Marx’s good fortune. Marx was fortunate because he saw everything as if it were a fortuitous bounty. It was impossible to know-were persimmons his favorite fruit, or had they just now become his favorite fruit because there they were, growing in his own backyard? He had certainly never mentioned persimmons before. My God, she thought, he is so easy to love.” “Memory, you realized long ago, is a game that a healthy-brained person can play all the time, and the game of memory is won or lost on one criterion: Do you leave the formation of memories to happenstance, or do you decide to remember?” “’What is a game?’ Marx said. ‘It’s tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow. It’s the possibility of infinite rebirth, infinite redemption. The idea that if you keep playing, you could win. No loss is permanent because nothing is permanent, ever.'”
Spoilers: This book was soooo good. The ending was great. Though I’m sad that they never got together, I think it’s realistic. Sadie and Sam fought so much and were such complicated characters-I don’t know if they’d necessarily be a good couple. Marx’s death was so devastating to read. The NPC portion of the book was one of my favorites, and I love that I read his death from his own perspective. I also love that he originally woke up in the hospital because it gave me a false hope, ultimately making it more tragic when he died. I think my favorite game that anyone created was Solution. I don’t think it would be my favorite to play but I thought that it was brilliant and so unpredictable. For similar reasons I also really liked the plot twist in Dead Sea. Is it just me or are Sadie’s game ideas super underrated? The theatre murder mystery and Both Sides sound way more appealing than some of the ones she made with Sam (like Ichigo and Mapleworld, which both sound a little boring to me personally). Counterpart High sounds like a really fun game too, even though they didn’t talk about it much. On the topic of Counterpart High, I like that the most popular game wasn’t even Sadie or Sam’s. It felt more realistic that other peoples’ ideas were more successful, whereas if Both Sides or Mapleworld were the games to surpass Ichigo I would’ve said it was unlikely for one game company to have that much recurring success in the video game industry. The game Both Sides really showed how even a great idea could be seen as a “failure” to the public, and that popularity shouldn’t be taken personally. The section about the video game (Pioneers) characters is brilliant! I love that we get to experience what it’s like to be in the game, and while I knew that Sadie was playing as Emily I didn’t realize that Sam was playing as Dr. Daedalus (yes, I felt ridiculous for missing that once it was revealed but the gender thing really threw me off, which I loved). There are so many great references and clever connections to video games.
