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A review by mxhermit
Post-High School Reality Quest by Meg Eden
4.0
One of the best things I've discovered on Twitter this year is Meg Eden (@ConfusedNarwhal) and her book Post-High School Reality Quest. Being a big fan of video games, I was intrigued when I saw the premise of this book: At her high school graduation, Buffy finds that her life has started being narrated/controlled by a text parser in the style of an old school text based video game. This leads to some weird experiences. She dies, comes back to life, makes extreme choices, and more over and over again while trying to figure out not only what this voice in her head is, but what is life now that she's supposed to be growing up and going to college?
Meg Eden has a way with dark humor and that certainly shows throughout the book. Buffy is having a hard time of it because not only does she have all these experiences going on, she's got the text parser bringing her back to life after major episodes, which sounds traumatic. While reading it's such an adventure, trying to tell what's real and what might not be real.
Mixed in with the days that are dated for us as being in Buffy's college semester are episodes from the future in which she's in a doctor's office (her words, because the text parser says psychiatrist, which she thinks is judgmental). This method of storytelling, going back and forth, was a little confusing at first, but after a couple of chapters I got into it and was really just trying to figure the characters out. What did they mean to Buffy, were they part of this "text game", just what was going on? Real life, it seemed, was intangible at times and at others all too real. That feeling made the reading so strange and so tragic at the same time with certain passages and, particularly, when trying to decide how I felt about the ending.
The formatting of the book was pretty cool too, as it wasn't set up like a normal book with the words of the text parser relegated to italics or something. I haven't played a text game or RPG in awhile, but this book brought back the feeling of one and that made me quite happy. It's an intriguing setup and definitely an effective one in relaying Buffy's story to the reader.
Meg Eden has a way with dark humor and that certainly shows throughout the book. Buffy is having a hard time of it because not only does she have all these experiences going on, she's got the text parser bringing her back to life after major episodes, which sounds traumatic. While reading it's such an adventure, trying to tell what's real and what might not be real.
Mixed in with the days that are dated for us as being in Buffy's college semester are episodes from the future in which she's in a doctor's office (her words, because the text parser says psychiatrist, which she thinks is judgmental). This method of storytelling, going back and forth, was a little confusing at first, but after a couple of chapters I got into it and was really just trying to figure the characters out. What did they mean to Buffy, were they part of this "text game", just what was going on? Real life, it seemed, was intangible at times and at others all too real. That feeling made the reading so strange and so tragic at the same time with certain passages and, particularly, when trying to decide how I felt about the ending.
The formatting of the book was pretty cool too, as it wasn't set up like a normal book with the words of the text parser relegated to italics or something. I haven't played a text game or RPG in awhile, but this book brought back the feeling of one and that made me quite happy. It's an intriguing setup and definitely an effective one in relaying Buffy's story to the reader.