Rating: 
Summary: Great Stuff!
Review: A friend of mine passed on his review copy of this book to me, and talked me out of my skepticism enough to convince me to read the first 20 pages. That was all it took -- Lucky Wander Boy goes way beyond the simple 80s nostalgia suggested on the back cover. It's really a very worthy addition to the long history of Quest literature, with a very modern and very amazing turn of the screw coming at the end. Smart, fast-moving, FUNNY... You won't look at an arcade game the same way again (or your PS2, for that matter).
Rating: 
Summary: NOT The Great Videogame Novel
Review: After hearing unending praise for this new piece of "gaming literature", I certainly was interested. However, I came away pretty disappointed.Yes, this is a novel based on gaming. And, yes, this aspires to literary heights. But it fails - I don't want to get so excited that gaming is now "literary" that I ignore the quality of the work itself. This feels derivative of any number of GenX novels, tracing back to Copeland's "Generation X". The characters are shallow, the social commentary bland, and the ending ..... nonexistent. This is an utterly mediocre attempt, and the fact it concerns videogames shouldn't matter at all. The Great Videogame Novel still is waiting out there, somewhere. "Lucky Wander Boy" sure isn't it.
Rating:
Summary: Great Read, Buy It
Review: Can't say enough. But it!
Rating:
Summary: A new reading experience
Review: D.B. Weiss' first novel, "Lucky Wander Boy", is a story seemingly about a young man who ruins his life because of his obsession with the video games of his youth, and one game in particular - Lucky Wander Boy. But don't be fooled! The Video games that populate this book are every bit the McGuffin as was the black bird of Hitchcock's "Maltese Falcon". As you read, you will become increasingly aware that the story is really about something very different. It explores the protagonist Adam Pennyman's relationship to life as expressed thru the video games he plays and often worships.
The book is tightly written and cleverly concieved. Unless you have the vocabulary of a William Styron, you may want to keep a Webster's handy. The story alternates between narrative and sections of explanation and exposition about various videogames, some real and some the product of Weiss' quirky imagination. You may find this movement disconcerting or even confusing, but be patient as the confusion is purposeful and a necessary part of the creation of the mindset through which Pennyman views life.
You may also find that the portrayal of the people who populate Pennyman's world are sketchy and poorly defined. This is also an interesting device, as the author brings us to see that Pennyman views the real people with whom he lives (and sometimes loves) as characters in the video games he plays. People who are being moved around the screen of his videogame existance without feelings or real personalities of their own. The clue to this attitude comes early in the book when Pennyman, while watching a TV interview with Kurt Krickstein (a man who will eventually become his employer) remarks, "His childhood features had remained with him, but in the transition to early middle age they had become cartoonish, as grotesque in their own subtle way is the latex F/X creatures in the background behind him. I knew it was hip to like cartoons, but I didn't think it was hip to be one."
This book may grab you by the throat and take you on a wild ride of a reading experience. However, if you are a person who likes formula books where the hero is beset by seemingly unsurmountable challanges and where all the problems are solved and villians vanquished in the last 10 pages, this may not be your idea of a good read. If you are open to a thought-provoking and alternate way of looking at life this intelligent novel will not only be your cup of tea but the entire box of teabags! And the ending may leave you physically and emotionally breathless, as it did me.
Read this book. You may love it - you may hate it. I guarantee that you will turn the final page and feel that you have read something very different. N. Hernandez
Chicago, Il.
Rating:
Summary: A new reading experience
Review: D.B. Weiss' first novel, "Lucky Wander Boy", is a story seemingly about a young man who ruins his life because of his obsession with the video games of his youth, and one game in particular - Lucky Wander Boy. But don't be fooled! The Video games that populate this book are every bit the McGuffin as was the black bird of Hitchcock's "Maltese Falcon". As you read, you will become increasingly aware that the story is really about something very different. It explores the protagonist Adam Pennyman's relationship to life as expressed thru the video games he plays and often worships.
The book is tightly written and cleverly concieved. Unless you have the vocabulary of a William Styron, you may want to keep a Webster's handy. The story alternates between narrative and sections of explanation and exposition about various videogames, some real and some the product of Weiss' quirky imagination. You may find this movement disconcerting or even confusing, but be patient as the confusion is purposeful and a necessary part of the creation of the mindset through which Pennyman views life.
You may also find that the portrayal of the people who populate Pennyman's world are sketchy and poorly defined. This is also an interesting device, as the author brings us to see that Pennyman views the real people with whom he lives (and sometimes loves) as characters in the video games he plays. People who are being moved around the screen of his videogame existance without feelings or real personalities of their own. The clue to this attitude comes early in the book when Pennyman, while watching a TV interview with Kurt Krickstein (a man who will eventually become his employer) remarks, "His childhood features had remained with him, but in the transition to early middle age they had become cartoonish, as grotesque in their own subtle way is the latex F/X creatures in the background behind him. I knew it was hip to like cartoons, but I didn't think it was hip to be one."
This book may grab you by the throat and take you on a wild ride of a reading experience. However, if you are a person who likes formula books where the hero is beset by seemingly unsurmountable challanges and where all the problems are solved and villians vanquished in the last 10 pages, this may not be your idea of a good read. If you are open to a thought-provoking and alternate way of looking at life this intelligent novel will not only be your cup of tea but the entire box of teabags! And the ending may leave you physically and emotionally breathless, as it did me.
Read this book. You may love it - you may hate it. I guarantee that you will turn the final page and feel that you have read something very different. N. Hernandez
Chicago, Il.
Rating: 
Summary: Great book, maybe I was just tired at the end...
Review: Dont get me wrong - I loved the book. It was a great trip down memory lane, and is actually to blame for my current MAME addiction. I guess I just got a little lost in Japan (read it and you will know what I mean.) Still, a very entertaining book, and one I recommend.
Rating: 
Summary: A Rockin' Cool Book That Makes You 14 Again
Review: great book with a cool premise that centers almost entirely on something worse than video game addiction - video game obsession. this dude is so into video games that he simply cannot function in normal life. there is a point near the late middle where he is literally finding sexual satisfaction from playing old video games on his PC. his major object of affection is "lucky wander boy," a game that i actually thought existed in real life for a little while. his goal in life is to find this rare, lost game so that he can complete a book he's writing on an analysis of old-time games. but i gotta tell ya, once he's close to his goal, the end of the book takes a freaky turn that weirded me out to the absolute limit of my tolerance.
Rating:
Summary: LUCKY ME
Review: I don't read very often and picked this book up on a whim (I thought the cover was cool) and I'm glad I did. It is a very quick read and I think almost anyone could enjoy it-whether you like video games or not. Actually, the story is not about video games, it's more about a 30-year old guy trying to figure out his life as he's thrust into a job at a meaningless internet site that attempts to produce bad movies based on video games. The fact that Weiss has an awesome knowledge about video games of the past and a great sense of humor is simply a bonus to the crafty, intelligently subtle and emotional story. The end is really surprising and fantastically creative.
Rating:
Summary: I love Adam Pennyman!
Review: I gave up on video games eons ago, when that little ball in Pong started moving faster, so I was reluctant to read this book when a friend insisted that I should. But as it turns out, even those who fail to understand the draw of video games cannot escape their impact on our culture, and Weiss documents that perfectly in his portrait of obsessive, constantly thwarted, yet still hopeful Adam Pennyman. Weiss has captured a generation's search for meaning in a way that Douglas Coupland never will (at least not with Weiss's subtlety, intelligence, and quirky sense of humour). Pennyman is a great character, an interesting mixture of Holden Caulfield and that guy from Revenge of the Nerds (pick any of the nerds). A warning to women who want to read about shopping and boyfriend problems: this isn't for you. But if you like a little complexity in your fiction, read Lucky Wander Boy. You may hate Adam at times, but then you will have to admit that you know way too many guys like him--silently tortured, deeply flawed, but still somehow [interesting].
Rating:
Summary: Dry as the Serengeti, brilliant as the sun.
Review: I must admit I like to read books in one fell swoop like a Viking raiding party; pillaging turns of phrase, sinking my mind's blade into extended metaphors and (dare I say it) raping virgin concepts, laid bare and vulnerable by the author for my pleasure. But when I picked up LWB, I was befuddled. This was no love 'em and leave 'em trade novel, this was art and deserved to be treated with dignity and respect. My inner viking was at first emasculated (Weiss' vocabulary is as commanding as it is deft), then bound (Pennyman's journey is far more compelling than most protags in the genre) and then tortured for long periods (when I forgot to bring the book to work to read during my lunch break. The barbecue chicken was cold solace.) This book is a masterpiece of post-structural projection angst without once dipping a toe in the pool of self-indulgence, yet it reads like an overstuffed bag of guilty pleasures. I laughed out loud, squirmed uncomfortably in my seat and I held my breath for pages at a time. If someone doesn't make this into a feature film, I'll be quite surprised. Weiss is an original in an avalanche of new, "edgy" writers. He's not just a walking encyclopedia, he's a man with a passion and the talent to make his libretto his own. I have never read anything like Lucky Wander Boy (I'm not a big fan of video games, you understand), and yet I knew as I was reading it that I would never see its ilk again. I took my time, savored every word and took inspiration from every page. No matter what Weiss writes next, I'm sure it will be good enough to slow down this old Viking.
|
