Awaken Online: Catharsis

Awaken Online: Catharsis

By Travis Bagwell

Jason logs into Awaken Online fed-up with reality. He's in desperate need of an escape, and this game is his ticket to finally feeling the type of power and freedom that are so sorely lacking in his real life.

Awaken Online is a brand new virtual reality game that just hit the market, promising an unprecedented level of immersion. Yet Jason quickly finds himself pushed down a path he didn't expect. In this game, he isn't the hero. There are no damsels to save. There are no bad guys to vanquish.

In fact, he might just be the villain.

Ah, I too know the pain of stumbling into in-game villainy.  Once upon a time, my boyfriend was playing Red Dead Redemption, but, getting bored, fell asleep, allowing me to take control.  Little did he know I would awake him twenty minutes later, on the run from the law and desperate for help.  I'd managed to steal a stagecoach, run over some people and get a little infamous without much trouble at all, although I was not really capable of sustained infamy, as it required more hand-eye coordination and knowledge of the controls if I wanted to actually... live.

This was one of the prompts I was most dreading, because I have never read any LitRPG and was trolling the GoodReads message boards looking for suggestions and they, by and large, sounded - terrible, like just awful.  This one had good reviews, but wasn't available at the library, so I did actually pay money for this experience, and I have to admit, I was very pleasantly surprised!  This is, again, something that you have to take on its own terms, as it's never going to win a prize for writing, but it's an action-packed, somewhat humourous take on what happens when you kinda sorta fall into villainy and discover a hidden talent for it.  I'm even more impressed, upon further investigation, to find out the author, Travis Bagwell, is an international tax attorney, not a field well known for its erudite and creative minds.

But all that being said, I had a good time reading this!  It wasn't perfect, and there were a lot of threads that were introduced without any real resolution in this book (I assume because the sequels were already planned) but at least once, something that had made no sense was actually explained as a logical action (i.e., the game wasn't shut down after repeated notifications that the AI was making under the table changes and accessing people's memories because a board member pushed it through hard to help his sociopathic son).  Some of the characters were definitely over the top - I mean, the reveal that Alex actually regularly murdered small animals and was not merely a garden variety dickhole was a real surprise.

And that's I think the book is weakest.  Instead of just making Jason kind of emo and sad-sacky like most teenagers are, Bagwell like legit gave him a sociopathic enemy and had his parents literally kick him out of the house, which - what? I didn't necessarily need Jason to be justified in his anger to like him, in fact, I think it would have been much more realistic if Jason had realized that he, too, had overreacted and allowing the game to become an outlet for him made him more patient in the real world.

But despite what I said about logical motives up above, this book was not really aiming for realism - all three pivotal characters in the game were played by three kids who went to the same school?  Time is a little tricky too - even though Jason has more free time because he's been kicked out of school (and ostensibly re-enrolls somewhere else, although he never goes in the book) school never interferes with anyone's playing time - not Jason, Riley, or Alex.

I've got to wrap this up, since I'm getting too far behind on my reviews.  More books, fewer reviews!  I still haven't decided if I'll be reading the next ones in the series.  If they're on sale ($$) I think I would.  Alternatively, if I have to keep reading just to stay current with my boyfriend, who just started Catharsis' audiobook version (review not forthcoming on this blog) I would do it.  So far the books we've both read include: Watership Down and The Magicians series - so we're about due for another set.  I've tried to suggest Murderbot, as those are great, but sadly, Ms. Wells price per novella structure is a bit offputting.

45: A LitRPG Book