In Nick Cole's Soda Pop Soldier, we met PerfectQuestion, one of the world's leading online gamers. Cole appropriately opens the sequel, Pop Kult Warlord, with PQ winning the Super Bowl of gaming. PQ says, "There used to be another Super Bowl, someone told me, before the Meltdown. But it got all Social Justice and no one watched it anymore." He's a pro, with more earnings than he can spend, and millions watch from home and gathered in stadiums to watch him play. He's not necessarily in it for the money, but for the hunt. But when, before PQ's even had a chance to have a good night's sleep after the Super Bowl, his agent calls him with an offer of five million dollars in gold for a month's work, even PQ can't turn that down.
His new client is a prince in Calistan, a Muslim caliphate carved out of a portion of Southern California after the Meltdown. Rashid has seemingly endless wealth, and puts PQ in charge of Calistan's presence in a civilization building game. For reasons that PQ doesn't immediately grasp, Rashid wants him not to build up the civilization in the game, as one might expect, but to destroy others, without regard to wasting the resources of other powers. This game is a sort of petri dish of international relations. Other countries have a presence in the game, and Rashid wants to establish Calistan's dominance by attacking them.
PQ quickly becomes convinced that he's being used, and that he's trapped in Calistan until Rashid is satisfied that PQ has done his bidding. The class divisions and downright evil that reveals itself sours PQ's taste for the job to the point that he's willing to give up the gold if he can just get out with his life. On top of that, his "agent" turns out to the a CIA agent; PQ is an unwitting pawn in a larger geopolitical plot.
As in Soda Pop Soldier, Cole weaves the online action and the IRL (in real life) action together seamlessly. Even a non-gamer like me can appreciate the action and the interactions. Besides these two worlds, PQ has long, vivid, detailed dreams, in which he's on a video-game-like quest to defeat an evil villain. To be honest, for much of the book I thought this part of the story was an uncharacteristic distraction. I should have given Cole more credit! It all comes together in the end.
(On a side note, Cole really loves writing about food. On two or three occasions, I was ready to book a flight to LA to track down the restaurants from which the meals in the book came. It's rude to make a guy so hungry while he's reading! Next time I'm in LA, I'll treat Nick to some donuts or some Pizza Ravi.)
Cole doesn't write much about the Meltdown, but he give some hints. PQ says the "world before the Meltdown" was "a madhouse of grievance action and social justice. And all of it a scam for cheap power and wealth redistribution." Sounds pretty accurate. When PQ is trying to get out of Calistan, he reflects, "If I ever make it back to America. . . I won't leave for a really long time. Freedom ain't free, and. . . it's pretty great." Amen to that. These insights into Cole's point of view provide some background but he doesn't let political points detract from the story.
Pop Kult Warlord is a fun, fast-paced read with attitude. It's a worthy follow-up to Soda Pop Soldier and, hopefully, a set-up for an even cooler sequel.
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