Attack the Geek - Did Not Finish

Attack the Geek by Michael R. Underwood


I got this from Netgalley and could not finish it.
The Short Version: It was too concerned with being a GEEK book and not concerned enough with being a geek BOOK. Too many geek references, not enough plot, the end.

The Much Longer Version: Back when I was a never-getting-laid fifteen year old, I would have thought this book was the shit and probably the toilet paper, too. The very things that make me unpopular make me powerful enough to smite my enemies? It's a geek boy's wet dream. Throw in a bisexual hot gamer girl as the lead and it's time to start fapping.

However, as an occasionally-getting-laid thirty-six year old, the book annoyed the living crap out of me. I've seen the book described as Harry Dresden meets Ready Player One. That's true if it combines the worst aspects of both works, I guess.

The reason the pop culture references worked in Ready Player One worked for me and these didn't was that the references in RPO had already stood the test of time, for the most part. The ones this book are going to seem dated in 5-10 years. They were also critical to RPO's plot. All the geek stuff in this seemed like it was being mentioned in case I'd forgotten I was reading a geek book in the two sentences since the last geek reference.

At the 25% mark, I still had no inkling of what the plot was going to be and I was beyond annoyed with the barrage of geek references. Copious pop culture references are fine but there needs to be something resembling a plot too. As near as I can tell, the plot is spout as many geek references as possible. Also, there are gnomes involved in some way.

I caught most of the geek references but to the uninitiated, this book will resembled the classic Star Trek: The Next Generation episode Darmok, where Picard meets that alien that can only speak in quotes from a story.

Maybe if I was more of a hard core geek, I would have appreciated this more but I get the feeling it's meant for a 20-something gamer. That's all I've got to say about that.

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