Awaken Online: Catharsis

Catharsis takes the ideas of LitRPG (see Ready Player One for the best known but lowest explored potential example) and goes to town on it, really showing how open such an online world would be to be exploited.Jason has always been fairly downtrodden in his high-achieving school and is neglected by his parents. One day, Falling Down-style, events transpire to make him snap and shout at his teacher and headmaster, and is expelled. He rushed home and immerses himself in the brand new online world of AO (Awaken Online).As with Euphora Online (Phil Tucker), AO has been designed with the help of AI to try and maximise the time gamers would want to spend in the game. We are treated to flashbacks by the developers/testers who are seeing the changes the AI is making to the game's code and are trying to assess whether it remains safe for release.Jason starts the game from scratch but due to an unusual reaction to an initial test is aligned to evil, and is therefore treated with suspicion by the in-game characters meant to help him train and become familiar with his new surroundings. This begins the chain of events that lead Jason to the path of in-game evil, in true Walter White style as one slightly dubious decision after another sees him become embroiled in some very nasty events.Over the course of the game, Jason is honest with himself and knows what he's doing is bad but hey its just a game, why not have some fun with it. And he does. As his power grows, so does the nastiness of his actions and he soon becomes very powerful in certain ways (but thankfully more strategically and directing the action than suddenly becoming a battle master or he-man).The world around Jason develops as he does, and his actions truly start to shape his game experience, and that of other people. I can't really go into much more detail without dropping spoilers but there are some absolutely fantastic sequences.The game supposedly uses time compression so that an hour in the real world will feel like 3 or 4 hours in the game. My one gripe with the book is that when the game developers notice Jason's unprecedented progress through the game they begin to watch his actions and this seems to be real-time - there is no real attempt to explain how they can watch it as it unfolds (or the fact that what they are seeing will have happened quite some time before and events will have continued from there).This book has more interaction between Jason's real life and in-game life than Euphoria Online did, which helps to explain his motivation for decisions. His real life troubles and requirements drive his desires in-game.As usual, there is the evil AI/conspiracy aspect to the world, but this doesn't yet feel quite as big a deal as in other books, but I think that is the groundwork laid for the next two books (plus two side-quests).I heartily recommend this book, but readers should not expect something like Ready Player one, much more like D&D or The Witcher style gaming.

Having finished reading a number of books over the past few weeks, I was skimming the recommended section and saw this. The description piqued my interest and from reading the opening scene I have not put the book down for the past few days.I'm a casual reader who enjoys stories and progression opposed to lengthy descriptions of everything happening that novelists seem to focus so much on.This book progressed at a fair pace and continued to keep my interest. A great story coupled with gaming elements was a really refreshing break. For once I didn't feel I needed to finish reading just because I had started, I actually looked forward to reading more.Now to book 2

The action sequences are well thought out, and creatively macabre e.g. the body horror associated with the skills. I liked that the main character is an anti hero. It feels like this first book does a great job setting a scene for the rest of the series. Some reasons as to why I chose to give 3 stars include:Dialogue feeling awkward and cliche, especially in the school bullying scenes at the beginning of the book.There is some dramatic irony because the reader knows that the system is malfunctioning, but Jason oversees these features as a quirk of the system, which was good because it gave levity to the story. My issue is that the breaks with the lab scenes just broke the immersion and pacing. I didn't feel like all the lab scenes were necessary; I didn't care if Claire was checking in to do a video log.I thought that the NPCs would have greater roles, especially in the war after the council was created. Instead they get pulled to the wayside, so felt one dimensional.Also, 'Alex is bad cause he was a born a psychopath' feels like a cop out. It would've been enough to amount Alex's actions to being a social class issue.

From the opening I (wrongly) thought this was going to be another "angry white-boy revenge" novel. I was overjoyed to find this wasn't the case. This is an excellent first novel, and I was thoroughly entertained by this underdog story. Seeing someone at the bottom of the foodchain fight their way up through cunning and determination was both pleasing and cathartic (good subtitle choice Mr Bagwell). Interspersing the core story by following Awaken Online's development before and after release allows context to slowly become apparent, and lets us see the events from an outside perspective. And then as the icing on the cake, this is a book about self improvement and wanting to become a better you. Highly recommended!

What a great read, it pulled me into Jason's world from start to finish. It's great to view a player from a darker perspective, the world he inhabits in the game is well thought out, some really great characters such as Jerry. What a laugh he is, Jason is a very complex character with a lot of issues to sort through. But he gets to work through his anger, by having great, if scary time doing it. It's hard to work out who are the guys in white hats, but you have a great time trying. I highly recommend you read this book. Fab

A brilliant read. After a slightly clichéd start, the book cracks on wonderfully and before you can say "RPGMMO" you find it's a cracking page-turner with a lovely easy style and engaging characters. If you like playing MMOs, read it. If you like RPGs, read it. If you like fantasy... you get the idea. I'm going to be very disappointed the next time I log into any online fantasy games, because they won't be able to hold a candle to Awaken Online. Yes, I'm looking at you, well-known game that rhymes with cow.