Title: The God Game
Author: Danny Tobey
Publication Date: January 7, 2020
Publisher: St. Martin’s Press
Format: Edelweiss eARC
You are invited!
Come inside and play with G.O.D.
Bring your friends!
It’s fun!
But remember the rules. Win and ALL YOUR DREAMS COME TRUE.™ Lose, you die!
With those words, Charlie and his friends enter the G.O.D. Game, a video game run by underground hackers and controlled by a mysterious AI that believes it’s God. Through their phone-screens and high-tech glasses, the teens’ realities blur with a virtual world of creeping vines, smoldering torches, runes, glyphs, gods, and mythical creatures. When they accomplish a mission, the game rewards them with expensive tech, revenge on high-school tormentors, and cash flowing from ATMs. Slaying a hydra and drawing a bloody pentagram as payment to a Greek god seem harmless at first. Fun even.
But then the threatening messages start. Worship me. Obey me. Complete a mission, however cruel, or the game reveals their secrets and crushes their dreams. Tasks that seemed harmless at first take on deadly consequences. Mysterious packages show up at their homes. Shadowy figures start following them, appearing around corners, attacking them in parking garages. Who else is playing this game, and how far will they go to win?
And what of the game’s first promise: win, win big, lose, you die? Dying in a virtual world doesn’t really mean death in real life—does it?
As Charlie and his friends try to find a way out of the game, they realize they’ve been manipulated into a bigger web they can’t escape: an AI that learned its cruelty from watching us.
God is always watching, and He says when the game is done.
This book was my first read of 2020, and way to start the year off right.
It was perfect for my geeky, nerdy, AI-loving, video-game-playing self. I always forget how much I love rogue AI and virtual reality stories until I read them, and this had both, so win-win.
The God Game is a virtual reality game overlaid onto the real world, where the stakes are high, the AI is more than a little bit rogue, and nothing is quite as it seems.
This book isn’t going to be right for everyone, but it hit that sweet spot for me, between video games, philosophy, sarcasm, and danger. It’s Sword Art Online with multiple points of view and overlaid onto the real world instead of fully immersive virtual reality. But hey, an off-the-rails AI is still an off-the-rails AI, right?!
It’s been a long time since I traded sleep for a book, because sleep is my favorite activity. Okay, maybe second favorite, right after eating bacon. But when I hit about 75% on this book at 11:30 at night, I knew I was in trouble, and I stayed up and finished it before going to bed, darn it. Was I exhausted the next day? Yes. So worth it, though.
❧ Hint: humans suck. Humans have always sucked. Rogue AIs are clearly where it’s at.
The entire premise behind The God Game is an AI that thinks it’s God, both manipulating and trying to understand humanity. Sounds like a pretty God-like thing to me. I loved this AI, which although it has no official name other than “God,” is clearly my favorite character in this. What can I say? I have a soft spot for potentially homicidal AIs.
The G.O.D. game is a virtual reality game overlaid on top of the real world, viewed through a phone, and it offers rewards that are as enticing as the potential consequences are deadly. Basically, win big or never go home.
Which are some stakes right there. The AI basically embodies the idea of chaotic neutral, so I never knew what to expect from it or how to feel about it, and I was often pleasantly surprised by events as they unfolded.
Yes.
But you’re God.
Yes.
Aren’t you supposed to be kind and loving?
Yes.
So … isn’t that a contradiction?
Charlie let that hang.
Then God answered.
Anyone is a murderer under the right conditions.
❧ The book raises so many moral and philosophical questions, and I found it delightful.
Also slightly terrifying and potentially existential crisis inducing. Sort of what you’d expect from a book based on an AI that thinks it’s God. I’m a huge fan of books that make you think. Not in the leading you to the river and forcing your head in to make you drink sort of way, but in a more subtle way—by answering none of the questions and forcing you to fill in the gaps yourself.
I can’t actually give any examples, because I feel like anything I say would be considered a spoiler. What I will say is that the message I loved the most from this book was this: sometimes, we are the biggest danger to ourselves.
❧ The heroes of this are nerds and geeks, and if that’s not a perfect cast, I don’t know what is.
I got their references! I understood their struggles. Probably because I was like several of them in high school myself. I applauded their sarcasm. Because if there’s one thing teens know how to do, it’s sarcasm.
Let’s be clear, though: these kids are no heroes. They’re teenagers who are lost and confused, barely staying afloat with what’s going on in their own lives, so wrapped up in their own worlds and unable to save themselves that they rarely give a thought to those around them and what they might be going through.
And you know what? Who the frig isn’t? I was that much more invested in their story simply because they were so real and normal, facing extraordinary things.
Vanhi was a sphere.
Peter was a cone.
Alex was a rhomboid.
Peter started laughing.
“What?” Alex said, assuming the joke was on him.
“Kenny’s square.” Peter laughed harder. “How appropriate.”
“I am not!” Kenny snapped. “I mean, I am a square here, but I’m not square.” He slugged Peter’s arm. “That’s not even modern slang,” Kenny mumbled under his breath.
❧ The friends in this book all have their own stuff going on, their own arcs, and all are tested in different ways, and there was always the question of whether their friendship was enough.
Friendships in high school are both hard and often transient. The group feels pretty solid to start off with, or mostly so, but are they? Are they really?!
The best thing about the God Game was how it not only made them question themselves, but their connections with other people.
Which always has the potential to be both a good thing and a bad thing. This is a dynamic I love in books and shows, when friendship is tested and a character (or characters) have to find out just how far they’d go for someone else. It’s one of my favorite tropes, and it was no exception here.
❧ There’s moments that are every bit as creepy and dark as you would hope, and I got goosebumps!
The beginning starts off a little slow (as they do), but Tobey drops just enough foreshadowing to know something’s about to go awry. The hints were fairly in-your-face, but just sinister enough to entice me to keep going until something started happening, and they quickly gained momentum until, phew, things got dark quickly.
He was wrong about Charlie watching him through the camera.
It was God who was watching through that little eye.
And why not? Wasn’t God always watching?
❧ There are absolutely no black and whites. Don’t try to find them. It’ll hurt your head.
This whole book exists in shades of gray, as it should. People are neither good nor bad. They’re just complicated. As is the game. And everyone has secrets. Secrets galore!
If gray characters are your thing, there’s a whole cast here for you to love.
Everyone has something to hide, and little by little, this book airs all their dirty laundry. It was fascinating seeing all the different perspectives. Just when you think you know a character … think again! A new revelation about them smacks you right in the face. I loved the constant guessing and the pure, agonizing realism of it. Because we all have secrets, don’t we? The real question is, how far would we go to keep them?
“I’ll call you George,” Peter said.
❧ The teen angst is strong with this one.
I mean, to be fair, it is a YA coming of age focusing on teen issues, so it neatly falls into the niche it’s supposed to be in. This is purely a me issue. But I served my time and came out the other side into something resembling adulthood. Reliving teen angst to such a high degree isn’t necessarily on my to-do list (and mostly, it makes me want to shake some sense into these kids).
On the other hand, to play Devil’s advocate to … my own Devil … because I’m talented like that, the struggles all the teens in this book face are so freaking relatable.
Which, come to think of it, is probably why I struggled a bit with the depth of it. Everyone has such dark, emotional issues and it was just a lot, coupled with the resonance it stirred from my own teen years. All I’m saying is be prepared for it going in, because this book will dredge up some stuff if you let it!
I do appreciate a good rogue AI. Great review!
Awesome review, Sammie! My review is up today too and I loved this! Especially all the secrets. And I loved how developed all the side characters are. Tons of fun😁
Yes! I need more books like this. I’ll probably stalk this author for another book. xD Erm … I mean … follow … from a safe distance. *cough*
Super review, Sammie! I’m now even more excited to read this one because all the reviews I’ve seen have been expounding on the awesomeness that is this book. It sounds hella creepy and for once, I’m here for it! 😍
It’s creepy, but in a way that you totally can handle. 😉 Not in a scary sort of way.
I keep seeing this one pop up on my feeds. I really want to read it. Love the review.
I hope you get a chance to! Definitely one I’d recommend.
Okay I was on the fence about this one, but you have wholly convinced me, no question. I needs. I love when it questions like, all the things! And morally gray books are my FAVE! Great review, thanks so much for sharing it!!
Yeeees, I hope you do read it! And love it. Everything about this book screams morally gray, and that’s what I loved so much about it.
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