A 2015 Top Ten Great Graphic Novels for Teens Book
Anda, a gamer, is invited along with her classmates to join Coarsegold Online, a massively multiplayer online game as a way to get more girls into gaming as girls online. Into the idea, she joins immediately, and is soon going on missions and killing undead. She crosses paths with Lucy, aka Sarge, who asks her to join her on a mission to kill some gold farmers. Gold farmers are basically low-level players who all converge on one location in a game and continually raid it for in-game resources (weapons, gold, supplies, etc.) and sell them online for real-life money. Sarge has been contracted by others who are angry at the gold farmers and are willing to pay players to destroy them. Soon Anda is regularly destroying gold farmers and earning money of her own. But when she encounters a gold farmer that not only hits back, but leads her to a rare creature and then destroys it, Anda begins talking to him. She learns that gold farming is his job, that he sits in a stuffy room somewhere in China in front of a computer with other gold farmers and plays all day, everyday for very little pay or benefits. When she learns of his work conditions, she's determined to help, but helping him could cost her her friendship with Sarge and her ability to play the game.
With In Real Life, Cory Doctorow is essentially retreading the same waters from his book, For the Win. That doesn't mean that In Real Life is a horrible book, it's just that it's a topic that he has already covered and in far more depth than a 187 page graphic novel - but this is one of those it's-not-the-book, it's-the-reader moments. If I hadn't read For the Win a few years ago, I probably would have enjoyed this one better, reveled a little more in the fascinating yet tragic world of gold farming and online gaming. What I do love is Jen Wang's art. It's simple, but she manages to pack a lot of info and emotion into the characters' faces, even the ones in the game. There's a watercolor feel to her colors that works really well, especially in the fantasy world of the game. I also really like that it's a story about a girl who games, especially in light of the recent stupidity in the gaming community. In Real Life is a good story about gaming and some of its unintended consequences, but if you're a hardcore Cory Doctorow fan, then it will seem awfully familiar.
(Read as part of YALSA's Hub Reading Challenge.)
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