Monday, January 6, 2020

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Gamechanger by L.X. Beckett




Gamechanger is a cyberpunk (and arguably hopepunk) thriller and debut novel from author L.X. Beckett.  It's a long novel, clocking in at 567 pages in the hardcover I took out from the library (and using not particularly large text at that), and one that carries a plot summary on the jacket/Amazon that would suggest something unremarkable in the text inside.  Yet when a reviewer I trust suggested there were a lot more interesting things going on between the covers, I decided to give the book a try anyhow.  And yes, there's definitely a LOT more to Gamechanger than what the book summary would suggest.

The result is perhaps a bit uneven mind you, with the book juggling so many different ideas and concepts that some wind up getting lost.  But overall it's a fascinating thriller set in a fascinating post 21st century world that's tried to clean up after our messes - an optimistic dystopia, if you will - with a bunch of characters who are definitely enjoyable to follow as they try and figure everything out.  The book doesn't hold the reader's hand in terms of explaining this world mind you, but readers who stick with it will find themselves rewarded overall, and the ending is satisfying if clearly not the end of the overall story.


---------------------------------------------------Plot Summary-----------------------------------------------------
The Setback, the events of the late 21st century, left the world in near-ruins.  Then people banded together to try and save and redeem what was left, in what would be known as the Clawback.  Now, with the world guided by a social network system that promotes and aids those who would act for the social good and strikes those who would do the opposite, the world might be on its way to recovery.

Or so Ruby Whiting, a member of the so-called bounceback generation, hopes, but to her dismay, the environmental project she knows to be necessary for a future is in jeopardy.  Ruby is somewhat of a celebrity, both due to having a father famous for both his music and his crank following of conspiracy theories and her brilliance in taking part in VR games that consume much of everyone's time these days....as VR avoids the overuse of carbon by breathing humans.  But what Ruby truly wants, in addition to defeating her VR archnemesis Gimlet Barnes, is to convince others to help the world and to guide it to a better future - in reality, not just in VR.

But when Ruby's real life job as a social advocate brings her into contact with a mysterious man named Luciano Pox, she finds things quickly going haywire.  For the conspiracies that her father - also connected to Pox - is hunting may in fact be realer than she could have imagined, and between the possibly antagonistic AI entities in the network, the humans concerned only for their selves instead of others, and the fact that the planet's fate may be hanging by a thread, the world's survival may depend upon Ruby, her father, and a few others making the right moves in both reality and VR.....or else all else may be lost.
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Gamechanger is a very complicated book, with a large cast of characters, many of whom get their own point of view chapters.  Just off the top of my head, there's Ruby, her father Drow, Gimlet, Gimlet's daughter Frankie, Ruby and Drow's AI companion Crane, Luce, and at least two other antagonists who all get chapters from their perspectives.  It's a lot, and only helps build to the feeling pretty quickly in the book that there's an awful lot going on at once, and that feeling never really goes way from beginning to end.  I basically only mentioned two characters in the above plot summary, and trust me, there are a lot more important ones than just those.

The characters we do meet are certainly interesting, if not the most well built of characters to be honest, but like everything else in this book, very few of them are stock tropes in principle.  Ruby's conflict between fun in game and her want to do good in real life might seem like a major conflict waiting to happen, but Ruby's care is always for the real world in this book, so the book avoids that trope in favor of a character who is struggling with her being overburdened by cares: for the world, for her father, for Crane, and even in her possible romantic interest with Gimlet.  Drow doesn't work quite as well simply because the book doesn't have enough time to spend on his background to make future events payoff, but he's still a really strong example of a man written off by the world still chasing the truth, even when others think he's nuts.  And then there's Gimlet and their daughter Frankie - Gimlet being in a polyamorous family unit that is falling apart in death and divorce, and struggling to raise Frankie while dealing with their feelings for Ruby (yeah that's a mouthful, but it actually works) and Frankie being the young child of this era trying to represent her fellow children while also trying to get her parent group back together.  And of course there's Crane, the AI trying to hide from those who would seek to shut sentient AIs down while helping keep Ruby and Drow alive.  There's a lot here, and they mainly work, is what I'm saying.

Add this to a plot that is just as complicated and yet a really well done train ride, for the most part, and you get a crazy ambitious novel.  The book's prologue opens seemingly with a plot to abduct children under the cover of natural disasters, and that plotline doesn't even come to roost for hundreds of pages later - instead we get fights between characters over the dangers of sentient AIs, fights between those AIs in VR, family conflicts as people try to figure out how to stay together or if they should get together, terrorists fighting against what they deem as an authoritarian world order, etc. etc.  There's a ton going on here, and I'm avoiding spoiling one of the bigger twists here, which occurs at the midpoint, to complicate things further.  And this book never really holds the reader's hands to explain what's going on, making it a little overwhelming at times, but for the most part it works.

Not that all of it works mind you.  The book leaves certain elements unresolved, most notably the motivations and actions of the character who is the focus of the prologue, and shows up here and there under the directions of a mysterious character.....but never really becomes too important in and of herself despite the emphasis of her in the prologue, which just felt weird.  Drow's storyline is hampered by the fact that certain past events - his abuse as a child and his AI's being hacked by an unnamed enemy - are never really given the focus they deserve, resulting in those plot points coming back in the future and just feeling out of the blue.  And the book decides to use hashtags and @s in front of terms and whatnot as if they're bad imitations of today's social media conventions, and it just feels really awkward and annoying.  So while there's a lot that's satisfying here, there's also a lot that just feels a bit of a mess and is annoying to read, making it hard to burn through this book as much as I do those books I truly loved.

Still, there's enough here that I'm interested in seeing where this story goes from here, and I look forward to a potential sequel - after all, I prefer ambitious books that fail to those that don't try at all, and Gamechanger certainly is ambitious....and it succeeds more than it fails as well.  Definitely worth your time if you feel the same.
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