My enjoyment of this book had peaks and troughs, but my first thought when I finished this was: that was fun, and also a little sad. 

My main problem with this book, I think, is the pacing, and how convenient some plot points seemed to be. I guess that’s two problems - whatever. There were moments where things were happening very quickly, very high-action and very tense; and then there were moments where the author was mostly dumping info that we didn’t really need to know. 

I also lost my connection to the main character about halfway through,

when suddenly he transformed from a poor boy making do with what he had, to a quite rich adult who could afford to buy expensive gear and spend all day working on this quest.

I also didn’t care for the romance in here, especially when it became a reason to stall the plot.

What I mean is: Wade’s feelings for Art3mis caused him to care less about the contest, allowing the Sixers to catch up to him.

It felt like a cheap way to create suspense. 

I also didn’t love some of the language in this book, like using ‘twink’ as a slur, and defining women as “a human female who has never had a sex-change operation”. I get that the main character is a nerdy white boy who probably has bigotry ingrained in his brain, but I still felt icky about it. Moreso because that was never challenged

and because of the gender-bendy situation happening with Aech towards the end.

I also hoped this book would have more social commentary in it, but to me it felt like it didn’t get much deeper than “escaping is a true coping mechanism, but real life can be good too sometimes”. 

All of that being said, I did enjoy my time reading this book, most of the time. There were some very funny moments in here, I enjoyed the 80s throwbacks, and I liked looking at a version of the future from the perspective of over a decade ago. I’m glad that I read this, but I don’t think I’ll be continuing in the series. It was fun, but not much more than that.