 The one thing I kept saying out loud while reading this book was, oh my god, was this written by a 12 year old? And after finishing the final scene of the final chapter, I had to conclude, yes, this book was in fact written by a 12 year old. The premise of this book is the future internet is more like virtual reality, and it is owned and controlled by a trillionaire computer genius who makes it available entirely for free to everybody in the world. And when he dies, he leaves a message saying that he has placed one Easter egg somewhere on the internet and the person who deciphers all the clues and finds it inherits everything, all his money, his business, control over the internet itself, everything. But I can better summarize the book with one sentence, dead Steve Jobs fanfic written by a 12 year old. The characters in this book do not behave like human beings. If you want to know everything you need to know about the protagonist of this book, go to Wikipedia and look up the term Mary Sue. That's all you need. The only entertainment value this book has is lengthy lists of pop culture references that go on for pages and pages and pages. Other than that, it has zero substance. I mean zero. That's the short version of the review. Now I've got some other things to say. I have a lot of things to say actually and I doubt I'll get them all in. First of all, I listened to the audio book read by Will Wheaton and going into it, I was thinking, would I be able to tolerate that? But he was fine. In fact, he was perfect for it. And for the first 20, 25% of the book, I was smiling and nodding my head plenty at the obscure references to 80s music and TV shows and video games that I recognized. But then I actually stopped listening and put the book away and was very close to not even finishing it because I was so put out at the unbelievable behavior of the characters. I have the same problem with this book that I have with every book or movie or TV show that I've ever seen or read that involves hackers. The point at which they are confronted by the evil corporation or the evil government or whoever it is that's out to get them, they never behave like people whose lives are in danger or people who are on the run and they don't stay off the internet. They just go to an internet cafe and get right back on with the same usernames, the same passwords and everything. I don't accept that. I've never accepted that in any story in any medium. And I find it a real deal killer. The skinny high school kid who was the protagonist of this book, I didn't believe his behavior or his existence really at all. He could easily outwit every evil corporation and every government agency. He knew every obscure bit of trivia. He could beat every video game. I mean smash every video game. Nothing was ever a problem for him. That's what I was saying before. That's what the term Mary Sue means. I remember when I was eight years old in second grade, first or second grade, I had this complex little fantasy about me and this little girl I had a crush on. We had bionic powers and our fat old teacher would faint when she saw us save the school and lift cars and stuff like that. That was this book. That was exactly this book. I cannot stress enough that there is nothing else in this book. Except huge lists of highly detailed retro gaming TV and movie trivia that you will find familiar and will make you smile when you hear it. And that's the only reason that people love this book. It's really rare to find a negative review of this book. Everybody gives it raging multi-thumbs up. Even Mark Bustler at Classic Game Room gave it a raving review and he doesn't do book reviews. I was surprised to learn that he reads. Ernest Klein is perfectly capable of writing a complete sentence with good grammar and a storyline with a beginning, a middle, and an end and basic character arcs, I guess, which a lot of authors aren't capable of. I mean there are billionaire authors running around out there now who can't do any of those things. So many of the most popular books and movies and TV shows we're seeing now are a complete mystery as to why they're popular. They contain nothing. And I suspect Ernest Klein is very aware of that. I could talk a lot longer about the problems I have with the various characters in this book and their behavior but I won't. It's not worth it. You can support 30 Seconds Sci-Fi and my other projects by becoming a patron. There's a link in the description below. And visit the 30 Seconds Sci-Fi Tumblr. That's my headquarters. In addition to my videos, I publish links and updates there every day.