SciFi and Fantasy Book Club discussion
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MMORPG Books?
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Reamde by Neal Stephenson has some MMO elements.
Also, Daemon and Freedom? by Daniel Suarez has a lot of MMO elements - in fact sometimes it's a bit like an MMO taking over real life, not the elves and such, but the mechanics of gaming, the social aspects.

I was really disappointed by Reamde. I bought it thinking that the MMO parts would be central to the plot, like cyberpunk was central to Snow Crash, but it just turned out to be a thriller where they play an MMO occasionally.
Anyway, City of Golden Shadow by Tad Williams is the first in a four-part series about a huge virtual world with a conspiracy behind it. There's a few MMO-specific bits at the beginning, but it quickly turns into general virtual reality stuff.
Yahtzee Croshaw from Zero Punctuation wrote Mogworld a while ago, which I think is about an MMO. I've never read it, and Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ reviews look mixed.
David Barr Kirtley wrote a neat short story about an MMO bleeding into real life called "Save Me Plz," available for free at his .
Also, not a book, but you'd probably enjoy the anime , which is about people getting trapped in an MMO. It has guilds, dungeons, leveling up, raid bosses, the whole gamut.


It's a light novel that started the anime with the same name. A light novel is like the japanese equivalent of a YA novel I think.
It's about a guy who plays a virtual reality MMORPG but then gets stuck in it. There are bad guys, guilds, pvp, pve and etc.

You could also read Accel World by the same author I feel it's better as a whole.
Log Horizon, Vol. 1 is good too, it's a bit more empire building and backroom deals then pretty much every other halp stuck in MMO book. Everyone I know seems to either love it or go meh boring. I would almost compare it to what if David Weber was Japanese and wrote a trapped in a MMORPG light novel series.
Most other MMORPGish books I can think of either fall off at the end like 1/2 Prince. Or the translation quality is too poor that it would be very jarring if your not used to reading translations. Well outside of the obvious ones mentioned here like Epic.
PS: Make sure you get the books not the manga for all of those above series sometimes places can be less then clear about which one it is.

If you like WoW, and are fairly caught up with the lore I found War Crimes pretty good.

No, it's not, though from early promotional descriptions I can see why you thought so. This has always been one of my recommended books for fantasy people who want to try some sci-fi, or vice versa. This series is the perfect example of lines being blurred; is it sci-fi, or is it fantasy? Hard to say.
Anyway, a brief summary. In the not so terribly distant future, the internet has grown to the point where fully immersive 3d virtual environments are the normal way of experiencing the web, from browsing a virtual mega-mall to watching a children's tv show as part of the actual episode. But all over the world, children are suddenly being struck down, falling into unexplainable comas. A few educated netphiles scattered all over the globe are beginning to suspect the online world itself is somehow at the root of it all. Their individual investigations will bring them close to each other in virtual space, but also straight into the heart of imminent peril.
Tad Williams does an amazing job of creating a sci-fi world that is realistic enough to be extremely believable. Rather than just blindly throwing around virtual reality jargon to make it sound good, he presents a vision that is based on actual technology and a solid prediction about the direction such technology is heading. Also, he is skilled at creating large cadres of characters and having each character sound unique. This is anything but easy for an author to achieve. I've always recommended this series, and having recently re-read it, I still recommend it. Despite all the leaps in progress we have achieved since Williams wrote it, The Otherland series is still a captivating vision of the future that has withstood the test of time.
Or so I feel, at any rate. :)

I've read it, it was okay, definitely not fantastic.


World of Valdira
A huge world full of adventures, ancient mysteries and monsters starving for your death. A world where everyone can make their biggest dream come true and become anyone they wish ¨C a successful trader, a wise anchorite, a brave warrior or a battle mage who can control disastrous elemental powers. But don¡¯t expect that the path to your dream will be easy and rosy. The path to the top is very long, if only you can ever reach it.


edit: LMS stands for Legendary Moonlight Sculptor that as far as I can tell pioneered this subgenre, and has like 40+ books or something insane. I read up to like volume 18 of the fan-translations.



Steppe by Piers Anthony is another gaming like one, though further away from a wizards and magic type MMORP.
Shesh. All mine are LARPs. Simon Hawke's two book Psychodrome series being another.
The closest I've read, not counting ones already mentioned in this thread, would be Killobyte - another one by Piers Anthony.





I'm surprised I havn't seen that before on any of the boards.

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It's the fairly near future and virtual reality has really taken over as the primary form of entertainment. The main character is middle-aged doesn't play games he is a work-a-holic which he uses to take his mind off his wife's death which threw him into a suicidal depression. He won a copy of a limited edition version of the big VR game and was told to take a week off of work, when he enters the world he quickly discovers that the Voices(like gods of that VR world) don't treat their world like it's a game because to them it's all deadly serious. It's a tough one to describe without really dropping big spoilers or ruining the way something is revealed but a friend showed it to me recently and I'm thoroughly impressed.
Books mentioned in this topic
Start the Game (other topics)Hobgoblin (other topics)
The Stolen Throne (other topics)
The Calling (other topics)
Psychodrome (other topics)
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Authors mentioned in this topic
John Coyne (other topics)Neal Stephenson (other topics)
Tad Williams (other topics)
Yahtzee Croshaw (other topics)
David Barr Kirtley (other topics)
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Books that has gaming element on them. I prefer books about MMORPG. You know, with mages, warriors, archers, guilds etc. :))
I've read Ready Player One and I loved it! I want to read more books like that. Any suggestions?