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The Book
Questland
Carrie Vaughn
Taking a stab at doing video for The Campfire Chats Podcast. Today is a review of Carrie Vaughn's Questland. Read My full review below:
I recently finished reading Questland by Carrie Vaughn. Questland is a book that is not afraid to ask how Moby Dick and Pokemon are symbolic of rampant capitalism. This amazingly fun book will be released on June 22, 2021. Questland comes from the same love of geek culture that books such as Ready Player One do, the main difference being the world of Questland is not nearly as dark, very real and not so mixed up in complicated geek culture references it becomes overwhelming at times.
At the heart of the book is a D&D adventure brought to life by the amazing advances of technology. This conflicts very well with people trying to “live” the medieval life having to interact with modern day mercenaries on a mission to retake an Island which has been lost. We follow Dr Addie Cox, a literature professor who is brought in on a mission to retake the Island of Mirabilis, a live D&D game island, not un-similar to Westworld. The only reason Addie is brought in is her ex-boyfriend, Dom, may be at the heart of the island's take over, and the rich Elon Musk like financier wants his property back. Addie has to team with a group of former soldiers now mercenaries while dodging deady puzzles and traps, and absorbing the mystifying world of Mirabilis. Mirabilis has it all, from unicorns,to dragons, to self-sufficient villages, to complex puzzles, it truly is a larper's dream world.
One of the things I loved about this book was how easy it was to read. Most nights I didn't want to put the book down. Not only was it fun and engaging but it was downright addicting. At the end of the book I knew I wanted more. All I can hope is that Carrie Vaughn is not done with Dr Addie Cox's Story and that we will get more in this world in the future.
With that said I want to get into my spoilery fun review of this book. So if it wasn't clear from the sentence before: Spoilers Ahead!
I cannot say enough about the character of Dr Addie Cox. She was so well written and that is in part because she was extremely flawed, but in a normal human way. To start out she had a very compelling and sadly modern backstory. She was the survivor of a school shooting in her teenage years, a shooting that took the lives of her bestfriend and boyfriend. Both of which died in front of her before the shooter took their own life. This has left her with trauma which shapes who she is. I enjoyed this backstory as it is all to real in our modern world to have people who survive mass shootings but it is not something that has been explored very much in pop culture, the only other example I can think of is American Horror Story which actually tried to humanize the shooter by having a haunted house be a source for his shooting. This is one of the few pieces of media I have encountered with the victim being a main character and it is done very, very well.<...
Oct 26 20211 hr and 2 mins