Annoyed!

Almost every Monday I am taken in by WHSmith's kind and useful half price book offer (except when they try to sneak in tat), but never again! Oh no, not after the nice checkout lady handed me this, the literary equivalent of poo in a bag.

I'm so annoyed, I really am SO annoyed by this book. I have not words to explain my contempt. To the point that I feel obliged to issue this warning to Second Life residents everywhere: for FUCK'S sake don't buy this book.

You see, the author comes with great credentials: judging by the jacket description, which pretty much credits him with single-handedly brokering the 2003 Geneva Accords, there's nobody more qualified to write a mystery novel about peace negotiations in the Holy Land.

So why, WHY, for the love of all things wordy, did he decide to include Second Life into his plot? WHY? He's quite clearly never been near the thing, I don't want to sound like some sort of metaverse protection agency because I'm not in the slightest bit bothered about misrepresentations. Publicity is publicity, innit? It's nice, in a way, that a mainstream writer is including our 'weird' little hobby in his lovely blockbusting romp. But why did he have to go and balls it up so badly?

Not one single thing his character 'does' during her entirely shoehorned-into-the-plot wander about the grid could actually be done. One does not left click another avatar to stroke them, one does NOT log in stark naked and wait for the pixel fairies to clothe one and one can certainly not be reduced to pixel goo by another avatar. Not without clicking 'ok', anyway. Oh and his main character appears to be able to open SL from absolutely anywhere, at speed, without any pesky 30mb downloads or 'with this graphics card? you'll be lucky' error messages.

So I am now in a position where I am utterly unable to appreciate what ought to be a fascinating insight into the Middle East because the author is a) so keen to be the next Dan Brown he's elbowing the plot aside to shove in 'clever' twists - involving, of all things, a virtual world and b) obviously so blasé about his research that he can't even be bothered to splash out on a free download and spend 3 minutes experiencing what he's writing about.

SO AGGRAVATED -.-