Soda Pop Soldier

Soda Pop Soldier, Book 1

By: Nick Cole

Narrated by: Guy Williams

Call of Duty meets Diablo in this fast-paced, action-packed LitRPG novel from the co-creator of Galaxy's Edge universe.

Gamer PerfectQuestion fights for ColaCorp in WarWorld, an online combat sport arena where megacorporations field entire armies in the battle for real world global advertising-space dominance. Within the immense virtual battlefield, players and bots are high-tech grunts, using drop-ships and state-of-the-art weaponry to wipe each other out.

But times are tough, and the rent is due, and when players need extra dough, there's always the Black, an illegal open source tournament where the sick and twisted desires of the future are given free rein in the Wastehavens, a Gothic dungeon fantasy world.

And all too soon, the real and virtual worlds collide when PerfectQuestion refuses to become the tool of a madman intent on hacking the global economy for himself.

©2018 Castalia House (P)2018 Podium Publishing

Loved it!

The description doesn’t do the plot justice - if I hadn’t loved Nick Cole’s Strange Company duo SO MUCH I probably wouldn’t have read Soda Pop Soldier based on the description alone. So glad I gave it a chance because it was great. I’m not sure (but will be looking into it) if Nick Cole hasn’t written many solo works or if Audible just hasn’t made them into audiobooks yet…. Most of the content on here with Cole is co-written with other authors. I like Nick Cole’s solo works better than the solo works of those co-writers and the co-written works too. If you enjoyed Soda Pop Soldier and haven’t checked out Strange Company and Strange Company: Voodoo Warfare make those 2 your next reads or listens. Gotta say, I love the names Cole comes up with for his books as much as the actual books. He has a talent for naming with flare. Taken on their own, how cool are the titles: Soda Pop Soldier, Strange Company and Voodoo Warfare ?!! all would make great band names

great story

I really enjoyed this book.The world in this book is extremely intriguing. I loved every minute of it!

Thoroughly enjoyable read!

Good narration, great writing and a great story! i particularly like the poetic language used to describe the world, it makes for a beautiful and detailed mental picture.

Ready Player One For Call of Duty players

This was a more realistic verson of Ready Player One with a computer and not a VR rig. It fits in well with gaming tournments and gaming leagues. It is a cyberpunk gaming adventure that is a stone's throw away from reality.

Interesting & entertaining twist on one of...

SCI-FI's bread and butter themes, a dystopian future. This time around video games & advertizing that moves the world round. The author creates a context where who you are plays out in the real world & in the virtual with equal gravity. Anonymity is seemingly non existant yet participants are every bit as vicious as if they're if they're hidden behind a veil.
Most of the time the villian turns out to be the most interesting character in the story, but the hero who has flaws is far more riveting . The protagonist is the flawed hero who's humanity is on full display while he deals with doing things sideways or traversing "the [path] less traveled". Humanity seems to have equal capacity toward the light as the darkness & one cannot escape the pull of either.

I look forward to the second installment of this saga in "Warlord".