I tried. I got about 80% done and put it down because it was leaving a bad taste. I came back and gave it another 20 pages before quitting. It wasn't because the characters seemed to lack human-like motivations, not the wooden clunky story, or the cringy virtual reality game. It was its love of authority. You distill this book down and that's what it is, pro authoritarianism. I mean, I get it, communism bad. But, this... this is like a tech-bro version of scifi: unimaginative in its view of life and too high on its own game theory to care about people. Sure, the "science" is cool but it's boring because it's just part of the games instructions. It's too excited to hunt all those threats found in their poorly lit dark forest to tell a good story. One turn at a time. Linear.

It's strange to be so vehemently out of step with the vast majority of readers of sci-fi, but this is not good scifi. I know a lot of people really really like it. That's why I read it. Call me an optimist. But this just suck. I'm glad about one thing - my memories of it are quickly dissipating.