Caverns of Socrates

I know some people consider McKiernan the poor man's Tolkien and that's not off base - he's stated many times he did his Iron Tower trilogy as a tribute. Still, I enjoyed them and though I recognized the heavy inspiration Tolkien provided, I think they can stand on their own. I corresponded with McKiernan years back and had my first editions signed by him - he's a really nice guy.

That's why I was bummed by this novel. It's dated, so some of the info on AI (artificial intelligence) has been beaten to death, but I bet if I read it at the time of its release, it would have been somewhat groundbreaking or at least not mainstream understanding. McKiernan must really enjoy the topic - he delves deep and so many years later, so much of it show more still holds true. That said, the intro was way too long. I just didn't want a heavy thinking read and wasn't expecting one, but the "modern" or "real world" aspects of the book were a heavy mental lift. The other problem was the characters. They seemed less believable in the earth realm than in the other world where they were warrior healers, shadow thieves and other magical beings. I just didn't care for them like I did with his characters from his other books. I think I have one or two other books from his Mithgar world to read, I'm still looking forward to them, but I wouldn't want to revisit this crew. show less

This is a tired story and it's told in a tired manner. Nothing in 'Caverns of Socrates' is original or well-developed and in the end you're left with the impression that you've just read some Frankenstein's Monster of a novel, cobbled together from the corpses of other - better - novels.

It features a cast of characters that made me want to punch them in the face repeatedly. With a shovel. The writing is derivative, unimaginative and it reads like your little brother's demented Harry Potter fan fiction. The kind where Harry has sex with leprechauns before being magically whisked away to Cybertron where Optimus Prime falls in love with him and bears him cyborg children. In short: I'd avoid it.

A group of modern day VR game players signs up to test the ultimate game! A recent series of natural disasters has thrown the world into recession, and one of the more powerful companies left is developing powerful new VR tools. Of course, the players get stuck in the game and become convinced it is real, and must survive and win to get out.
This is heavily based on the online game Gemstone, using basically the GS system that existed at the time. A really good book if you are an online or tabletop game player.