You

By: Austin Grossman

Narrated by: Will Collyer

Length: 13 hrs and 15 mins

Publisher's summary

A novel of mystery, videogames, and the people who create them, by the best-selling author of Soon I Will Be Invincible.

When Russell joins Black Arts games, brainchild of two visionary designers who were once his closest friends, he reunites with an eccentric crew of nerds hacking the frontiers of both technology and entertainment. In part, he's finally given up chasing the conventional path that has always seemed just out of reach. But mostly, he needs to know what happened to Simon, the strangest and most gifted friend he ever lost, who died under mysterious circumstances soon after Black Arts' breakout hit.

Then Black Arts' revolutionary next-gen game is threatened by a mysterious software glitch, and Russell finds himself in a race to save his job, Black Arts' legacy, and the people he has grown to care about. The bug is the first clue in a mystery leading back 20 years, through real and virtual worlds, corporate boardrooms and high school computer camp, to a secret that changed a friendship and the history of gaming. The deeper Russell digs, the more dangerous the glitch appears - and soon, Russell comes to realize that much more is at stake than just one software company's bottom line.

Austin Grossman's debut novel Soon I Will Be Invincible announced the arrival of a singular, genre-defying talent "sure to please fans of Lethem and Chabon" (Playboy). With You, Grossman offers his most daring and most personal novel yet - a thrilling, hilarious, authentic portrait of the world of professional game makers; and the story of how learning to play can save your life.

©2013 Austin Grossman (P)2013 Hachette

If you liked the nostalgia of Ready Player One...

You'll like this.

No, it's not the thriller RPO was, and we're not in virtual worlds (completely) but it's a quite enjoyable walk through memory lane of 80s and 90s computing and gaming culture.

Good story, good characters and well played.

Lost my interest halfway through

The book stared strong. I was enthralled by the origins stages of the main characters ascent. But eventually the book ended up feeling like a slog through the authors need to add more so he can up the word count.

OK if you are a gamer

The story is alright, but at times goes into excruciating detail on video game designs, and because the games cross several genres, it can become a little confusing.

The voice actor does a decent job, but needs to review how to pronounce certain 80s terms. For example, the Commodore PET computer was call a "Pet" computer, not a "P-E-T." I am a year older than the main character, and was part of the generation that first worked with the Pet computers in school

Overall, if you are looking for a listen to pass the time and are a gamer, then this would be a good title for you.

Great for game fetishists

Would you recommend this book to a friend? Why or why not?

Definitely listen to this book if you've ever wanted a story combined with fairly exhaustive narratives of actual game play and the mechanics of game design and videogame history.

Which character – as performed by Will Collyer – was your favorite?

Will Collyer does an excellent job with the voices of the characters and provides pitch-perfect delineation between voices. His portrayals of Matt and Lisa are entertaining.

Was You worth the listening time?

Grossman's a fine writer. YOU is worth the time, though if you're so inclined you can skim or double-time some of the longer sections describing particular games as they don't, for the most part, contribute materially to the overall story.

Any additional comments?

Grossman needed an editor who would have held him to cutting redundancies and forced him to extract the essential elements from the game play segments. Some of the earliest philosophical writing on the nature of videogames and the first generation to play them is absolutely stellar, envy-inducing prose. If you're looking for fiction combined with credible, authoritative perspectives on gaming and game design, you'll get it here.

Faithful to its gaming roots, story is erratic.

YOU was a bitter-sweet experience for me. On one hand, it revisited a period of video gaming that was exciting to be a part of, and having been in the gaming industry at the time, it was certainly faithful to the game design process and mentality. The author clearly has a reverence for 90s gaming, and that was enjoyable to discover.

The characters and story, however, were completely forgettable to me. Even as a self-identifying geek gamer of the era, I never attached myself to anyone in the story, and found it very hard to care about them or what they were doing.

An attempt is made to bridge the real world and the game world by means of some clever computer code (and possible mental trauma) that never quite defines itself and ultimately goes nowhere. It's a safe book that explores some quaint what-if scenarios surrounding a game franchise's evolution, but as for thrills and suspense, I felt neither.

I loved Soon I Will Be Invincible by Grossman and would definitely read anything by him going forward despite my tepid experience with YOU.

Great book for those who appreciate video games

This is a great story for those who appreciate video games and whatever makes them up. Specifically, what it takes to make a virtual world.

YOU might want to try a different book

Sadly, You could have been so much better, but as it stands, I don't recommend it unless you are really interested in the history of personal gaming computers and games. I picked up the book because someone said it reminded him of Ready Player One which I loved even though I'm not a big gamer. Be warned, You has almost nothing in common with RPO except that video games factor in the story. The plot lines of the two books are not similar at all and YOU is strictly fiction not sci-fi/fantasy fiction.

The plot of You is one of its problems - Russell, the main character, is struggling to find himself and his place in the world. By going to work for a video game company started by his old friends he tries to reconnect to his past and work through his existential questions while exploring the games as part of his job. The title YOU comes from the large sections of the book that are conveyed in second person as Russell works through his questions and problems as an avatar in different games. Example: You are a 14 year old girl, you are on a space ship, you encounter a cave, etc. Its not that the plot is dull, it just sort of seems to wander around and I found the second person sections a little confusing and tiresome after a while. In addition to trying to resolve his own identity crisis, Russell attempts to delve into the mystery of the death of his genius friend, Simon. If Grossman had made the resolution of mystery a larger part of the plot, that might have helped create more tension in the narrative, but ultimately, the mystery takes a back seat and the book leaves many related questions open.

In addition, the characters, although interesting, are difficult to relate to. They don't seem to relate to each other well so maybe its not too surprising that I didn't invest in them much. And there is one character, Don, that I never understood quite where he came from - he seems to have history with the other characters but he isn't part of original friendship. In addition to the human characters, the four central video game avatars are really characters and they are no more relatable than the people. The humans and the avatars all seem a little spacy and not well defined.

Narrative is all first and second person so it isn't a great challenge to a narrator, but Will Collyer was fine.

Ultimately, the book just sort of ends without a clear or satisfying conclusion. The book's summary describes it as thrilling and hilarious and it is neither. I didn't hate it, I was entertained by much of it, but I don't recommend it.

A must-read for gamers.

What did you love best about You?

Austin really captures what it's like to be in your late-20s: reminiscing about being "young" while struggling with the idea of still being able to make a change in your life while other peers seem to have already achieved success.

Did the plot keep you on the edge of your seat? How?

Like Grossman's other book, "Soon I Will Be Invincible," the story jumps around in both time and setting a lot. This book basically presents itself as a series of short stories that intermingle with one another to progress the core narrative. Any time I heard a mention of the plot's core conceit, my ears perked up - I *knew* this part would be important. It was almost as though I wanted to take notes so that I'd be able to solve the puzzle before the main character. I really felt the tension to solve the mystery. It was like being right there with them, no matter what time or space they were in.

What does Will Collyer bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you just read the book?

Will Collyer's were really on-the-nose. There were a lot of scenes where 4 or 5 characters would hold an extended conversation, and Collyer's impressions were so distinct that it really felt like 5 separate people were talking. The way he captured each person's level of aloofness was pretty impressive, too.

If you were to make a film of this book, what would be the tag line be?

Is life just a game?

As a techy and gamer an outstanding book.

Any additional comments?

The book was very good although I found myself wondering if a non techy could stand it. I at times found myself floating unattached to the story not really grasping some of the programming stuff but I just rolled with it and it worked out just like computers do in RL. But I don't think a non techy would be willing to do that. As a gamer I found the book to be a wonderful creation story as many games are, commonly a disregarded element in many games. (EQ2 and EQ). Over all I found the book very fulfilling.

Strong start

The novel You starts strong providing an interesting take on the history of video games, and the struggles of video game design.

Once you start getting into the novel though, the story becomes very convoluted. It’s hard to pin point what the point is. The focus seems to be on “mourneblade” but there are so many irrelevant side stories that the plot line of the sword gets lost.

There are also quite a few unexplained sequences that seem to be hallucinations, but it’s never really explained if that’s what is happening.

The climax of the novel is very anti climatic, and is followed by a completely irrelevant 30 minutes of over descriptive information about locations that are purposelessly described.

The narrative shifts from 1st to 2nd person at random times, in what seems to be a confusing attempt to put you in the role of the main character. This may have worked if it were consistent through the whole novel, but it isn’t.

Lastly, the narrator frequently mispronounces many words that are common in the fantasy genre, and it’s a bit immersion breaking when it happens.