I really liked the first book due to all the nerdy references and the ending utilizing Monty Python’s Holy Grail. Even when his friend was revealed to be a black lesbian due because it was better to present herself as a white male I just rolled my eyes. The second book on the other hand was garbage. You get the whole women in gaming lecture, the real hero was a woman trope, lgbt stuff of course, and the aforementioned character whining about the lack of representation everywhere they go or whining about the fact that Prince (they visit an area of the Oasis with Prince playing concerts) became a Jehova’s Witness and condemned homosexuality. The book overall seems to use to Sword Art Online plot as well.
It’s like the author felt the need to apologize. Although the the woke crowd a white make nerd from the 80s is evil incarnate it seems
It wasn't the worse thing in the world, but the ending did piss me off I'm not going to lie. At the end they did this preachy message of oh humm let's take the game offline completely every Tuesday/Thursday because you nerds need to go outside. Completely dismissing the fact that the two main characters in the movie met each other in game so telling people essentially to go outside and touch grass is a dick move.
Granted, may be getting hung up on that but I find the writing around gamers' lives pretty condescending a lot of the time. It's like most of the time the writers 100% believe in the nerd living in their mom's basement stereotype and they don't realise that while yes there's that sort of person playing there's also a lot of totally normal people out there as well possibly even ones you'd barely ever suspect of being gamers.
Shangri-La Frontier by comparison I feel was a much better done 'gamer' anime which I ended up watching out of boredom but they did a decent job with that. Although I did respect all of the easter eggs and references in the movie the fact that the best game ever created they could come up with was some shitty second life style rip off makes me feel like the writer who did that story was a massive tool.
Even though I find the Japanese concept of introducing stupid RPG mechanics into a real world scenario fairly cringe mostly they do get it right occasionally. I just feel like it's becoming an overused cliché these days and sort of a desperate attempt to try and appeal to gamers generally.
Now I want to see Shangri La frontier