Title: At Any Turn (Gaming the System)
Author: Brenna Aubrey
Publisher: Silver Griffon Associates (28 April 2014)
ISBN: 1940951046
Reviewer: Jane
The angst! Oh, the angst!
At Any Turn should seriously consider a brand partnership with a pharma company manufacturing Captopril (“Free bottle with every copy!”) given the elevated blood pressure levels people are likely to experience when reading it. My daughter recently discovered a cartoon series on Netflix, appropriately titled Total Drama, and I’m pretty sure that this book is a more grown-up version of it, all rolled into a convenient, three-hundred-and-sixty-seven page package. I swear, if you’d hooked me up to a pressure cuff or stuck a finger on my pulse while I was reading this thing, you would have rushed me to the nearest A&E.
At Any Turn picks up where At Any Price left off (spoilers ahoy-hoy for those who haven’t read the first book in the Gaming the System series); videogame millionaire, Adam Drake, and gamer-girl blogger Mia Strong are attempting to explore a post-virginity-auction relationship. Adam is working on controlling his workaholic tendencies and Mia is anxiously waiting to find out if she’s managed to get into med school. Given that the ‘will-they-won’t-they’ drama of book one, I thought that At Any Turn might follow a slightly smoother plot trajectory. You know, give readers a bit of time off for good behaviour.
No. No, no, no, no, nooooo.
Unlike At Any Price, which was narrated by Mia, Adam takes the reins in this one, and I can only say that, emotionally, he is like a light switch at the mercy of toddler – turned on and off repeatedly until you think you’re in an 80s discothèque. One minute he wants to stay in a relationship with Mia. The next, he’s totally over the whole thing or playing silly games with her emotions.
I couldn’t lose her. I wouldn’t.
Fuck it. Fuck her. I pulled my eyes away and never looked at her again.
“When can I see you again?”
“April says you’re taken and I as pretty sure that you were single. So which is it?”
… in spite of the warning bells at the back of my head, I decided to milk it a little.
“I am currently unattached.”
I was willing to concede, finally. I was willing to put this in her hands.
I was starting to hate the fact that I was still so hung up on her. Maybe it was just time to walk away from this mess?
“… we are done. Forever.”
… it was time she knew she was mine. “I love you,” I said hoarsely as she turned the knob.
You get the idea. (Quick ‘thank you’ to Katniss for standing in for Mia and Ken for Adam. Although I do apologise for the fact that Mia’s hair colour remains the same throughout. The Children’s Toy Box Production Company didn’t have a suitable Barbie replacement.)
In all fairness, Mia, bless her, certainly doesn’t make things easy on old Adam. Granted, her character is going through some pretty heavy stuff but crying all night into a self-help book: what does every single relationship councillor on the planet tell couples going through rocky patches? That’s right, they use the ‘C’ word. No, no that one, this one:
COMMUNICATION.
I do like a book that builds tension but, to me, it felt like that there was a lot of drama for drama’s sake and it all could have been resolved much sooner with a simple conversation between the protagonists. Ultimately, that would have made me like them both a lot more than I ended up doing – and not left me with the overpowering urge to hit both of them over the head with an Xbox controller.
As to the gaming aspects touched on in the story: if you read my review of At Any Price you’ll know that I was originally attracted to the book because of its inclusion of game development in the plotline. As someone who used to work in the videogame industry, I was intrigued as to how Brenna was going to weave the rather unglamorous life of game dev. into the storyline.
While most of the story was believable, two things stuck out for me – the hidden quest in Adam’s online game, Dragon Epoch, and the paintball match against rival developer Blizzard (who actually exist in real life).
Now, according to the book, Adam is the only one who knows exactly what the hidden quest is – which in the real world is highly unlikely because implementing any sort of gameplay isn’t just the work of a single coder. Even simple mechanics require concept artists, modellers, riggers, animators, lighters, a sound team. Then you’ve got the problem of inserting something into existing software. Nine times out of ten, something will break when you do this. Okay, maybe I’m being a little melodramatic, but the bottom line is changing code is (really) risky. That’s why new stuff, after it’s been made by a raft of people, is always always put through its paces by a group of testers before it’s released to the general public. And why the entire studio will take turns shooting you with a Nerf Gun if you ask for a change in the days prior to publishing/manufacture approval.
I know this from personal experience.
As to the paintball game; the only people who usually get shot at these kind of videogame studio corporate get-togethers are the executive and senior producers. And ‘friendly fire’ is a relative term: arm a dev. team with paintball guns after three months of twelve-hour days and eating Domino’s pizza night after night, there’s going to be anarchy.
Reading this review back, I think I sound a little harsh. That actually wasn’t my intention. Brenna is an excellent writer and At Any Turn is a fine example of self-publishing; the copy is wonderfully clean and the story hangs together well. However, I would be lying if I said that the constant on-again-of-again plotline didn’t wind me up and leave me feeling exhausted. I just hope that the third Gaming the System book dials back on the deliberate miscommunication. I don’t think my blood pressure can handle another round of Adam and Mia sabotaging their relationship at any and every turn.
*Please note that a copy of At Any Turn was provided by the author free of charge in exchange for a fair review.
**REVIEW UPDATE: Brenna (who, I might add, has been an excellent sport about the Barbies) has confirmed that Adam alone is not responsible for the secret Dragon Epoch. Misunderstanding of the text on my part. So you can consider that portion of my review A Very (Very) Brief Overview of Videogame development.
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