For the Win

Millions of young people in countries like China, India, and Singapore make fortunes for owners of online games by trolling for troublemakers. They also make millions for unscrupulous schemers who turn "gold" harvested from the games into real-world cash. With an amazingly sympathetic voice, George Newbern breathes life into these teenagers in a fantastic novel of revolution. A charismatic woman called Big Sister Nor convinces the gamers to form a worldwide union and demand living wages. It's when she calls a strike that the worlds of the Web and real life clash. Sometimes jarring changes of time and place are tricky to follow on audio without distinct chapter breaks. However, Newbern keeps listeners hanging onto every word as he builds a powerful story. M.S. (c) AudioFile 2010, Portland, Maine

April 19, 2010
Doctorow uses video games to get teenage readers to think more about globalization, economics, and fair labor practices in this expansive but ponderous story. Set, like his earlier Little Brother
, in a near-future world, it centers on attempts to unionize teenagers who work within massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs) as gold farmers, employed to raise game gold and find magic items to be resold, or as Turks, who help police the virtual environments. Employed for minimal wages under horrible working conditions—sometimes in near slavery—these children, led by a global group of fierce and talented gamers, band together, subverting the MMORPGs to take on their corrupt local bosses and the corporations that own the games. As usual, Doctorow writes with authority and a knack for authentic details and lexicon, moving between impoverished villages in China and India and inventive video game worlds. But the story founders under the volume of information he's trying to share—the action is interrupted by lectures on economic principles, sometimes disguised as conversations—and an unwieldy cast of characters. It's undeniably smart and timely, but would have benefited from tighter editing. Ages 12–up.