Conor Kostick

http://nhw.livejournal.com/727479.html

It's a YA novel set on a resource-poor future colony world where participation in a WoW-type game is practically mandatory, and your success in battle determines who gets access to what resources. We've seen games used as the centre of sf stories before; on the spectrum that has Jack Chick's take and Catherine Asaro's typically dismal "A Roll of the Dice" at one end, and Iain Banks' The Player of Games at the other, with Poul Anderson's show more Hugo-and-Nebula-winning "The Saturn Game" somewhere in the middle, I reckon that Epic is well up in the top half, say about level with Sherri S Tepper's True Game trilogy. (This classification will be of no help at all to you if you hate banks, like Asaro and find Tepper incomprehensible. But at least I tried.)

Knowing Conor's politics I was wondering if or how he would manage to bring in the revolutionary overthrow of the system, and he does it through a combination of a young hero and his friends teaming up with older mentors (one the central character's father, the other the ideological guide for the revolution). However he manages to keep the suspension of disbelief and (I would have thought) in a style attractive to the target readership. If you don't want your teenagers exposed to insidious lefty propaganda, don't let them read this book. On the other hand if you want them to be intellectually stimulated as well as entertained, you could do a heck of a lot worse. show less

I must confess before reading this biography and until I had seen the well-made TG4 serialised biographical portrait of O'Hanrahan, I had known very little about the man and his life before he commenced his revolutionary life. His role in Carlow and Wexford, where his familial ties within the entire revolutionary network were well-entrenched, is well developed in the biography by Kostick together with his strong beliefs on labour and social justice and even interest in the arts, drama, show more literature and the Irish language. Again we see the Gaelic League emerging from the Cultural Revolution as a means to develop the Irish national revival which later leads to people emerging who take military roles. It would appear that Michael would have been Second-In-Command to McDonagh were it not for the arrival and volunteerism of MacBride, whose leadership abilities could not be ignored. Naturally this resulted in all three being summarily tried and executed. The subsequent trauma caused to the family by the execution and the final visit are recounted here and they remained within the national movement some progressing into political life or marrying into other republican families, as was common at that era due to shared experiences.

Ironically I only discovered within the past year that a relative of my own married into O'Hanrahan's family. show less

On the planet of New Earth, violence of any kind is anathema. The video game Epic is both the economic and legal system, with power centered in a select few players. Seeking justice for this father, Erik and his friends must challenge the very rules of Epic and in doing so challenge the planet's way of life. Kostick sucessfully creates not one world, but two! This is a great read and I would highly recommend it for anyone, whether they like video games or not.

Erik Haraldson lives in two worlds. In the real world, on New Earth, he works on a farm with his parents, where they use both solar panels and wood-burning stoves, tractors and donkeys, an odd juxtaposition of the old and the new. He also lives in Epic, a fantasy MMORPG with virtual reality interfaces that nearly every person plays. It is within Epic that business transactions and governmental issues are handled, disputes are settled, and the economy functions.

Then, of course, things start show more going wrong. I really liked this book, it turned out to be much, much more interesting than I expected it to be. I do have three minor quibbles: there were almost no female characters in the book and the ones that did exist were unimportant and practically invisible; a major battle near the beginning was completely omitted; and the end wrapped up too quickly. But regardless, it was a fun and enthralling SF story. show less