WHAT’S DAN READING? July 18, 2016 – Posted in: Uncategorized – Tags: Staff-Picks

I’m reading IN REAL LIFE by Cory Doctorow and Jen Wang. Published by First Second Books.

Graphic novels about people playing video games have always attracted me. This is the story of a young girl named Anda who gets into a multiplayer online game called Coarsegold (similar to Warcraft). She finds she is quite good at the game and quickly joins a clan of other players. Her clan’s goal is to kill gold farmers. Gold farms are like a sweatshop of people mining in-game gold and selling it for money in the real world and are usually run out of poor countries. Gold farming is not allowed in many online games as it unbalances the system.
Anda learns even though she is just killing video game characters that there is someone on the other side of the world whose whole life is affected.
The art is awesome and beautifully coloured. I felt the character’s emotions and feelings through the great facial expressions. I smashed this book in one sit down and I highly recommend it to anyone who likes video games and slice of life stories.