Austin Grossman. (2013). You. Little, Brown and Company.

Austin Grossman. 2013. You. Little, Brown and Company.

Austin Grossman, You. Little, Brown and Company, 2013.

Austin Grossman. You. Little, Brown and Company, 2013.

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creators

1. • role: Author
   • fileAs: Grossman, Austin
   • bioText: Austin Grossman is a video game design consultant and the author of You and Soon I Will Be Invincible, which was nominated for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize. His writing has appeared in Granta, the Wall Street Journal, and the New York Times. He lives in Berkeley, California.
   • name: Austin Grossman

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2013-04-16T00:00:00-04:00

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title

You

fullDescription

When Russell joins Black Arts games, brainchild of two visionary designers who were once his closest friends, he reunites with an eccentric crew of nerds hacking the frontiers of both technology and entertainment. In part, he's finally given up chasing the conventional path that has always seemed just out of reach. But mostly, he needs to know what happened to Simon, his strangest and most gifted friend, who died under mysterious circumstances soon after Black Arts' breakout hit.
As the company's revolutionary next-gen game is threatened by a software glitch, Russell finds himself in a race to save his job, Black Arts' legacy, and the people he has grown to care about. The deeper Russell digs, the more dangerous the glitch appears — and soon, Russell comes to realize there's much more is at stake than just one software company's bottom line.

reviews

1. • premium: False
   • source: Boston Globe
   • content: "A razor-sharp comedy ... a smart meditation on the nature of gaming. Grossman, who has designed video games, brings experience but more importantly abundant affection to describing this world -the welcome recognition of the one Dungeon and Dragons enthusiast for another, the surreal happiness that comes from mastery, the semi-ironic clinging to juvenile aesthetics."—Boston Globe
2. • premium: False
   • source: Tom Bissell, Harper's
   • content: "Some of the most startling, acute writing on video games yet essayed."—Tom Bissell, Harper's
3. • premium: False
   • source: Cory Doctorow, Boing Boing
   • content: "You confirms Grossman's status as a major talent. Grossman isn't just chronicling the rise and fall of a company, or of a character, or even an industry. Rather, he uses YOU as a tool to prise open the mystical center of what art is, what games are, what fun is, and how they all mix together. A novel that both uplifts and entertains, and reframes the world we live in and the things we do in it. Easily one of the best books I've read this year."—Cory Doctorow, Boing Boing
4. • premium: False
   • source: Booklist, starred review
   • content: "A celebration of videogames and their creators."—Booklist, starred review
5. • premium: False
   • source: Charles Yu, author of How to Life Safely in a Science Fictional Universe
   • content: "YOU is every bit as fun as you hope it's going to be, and also much more. Grossman draws you in with his clever premise, but then as you progress through the levels, you understand the complexity of the world he has built. Full of wit, ingenuity, and nostalgia — a meditation on what it means to be the hero of the game."—Charles Yu, author of How to Life Safely in a Science Fictional Universe
6. • premium: False
   • source: Max Barry, author of Jennifer Government and Machine Man
   • content: "A brilliant, incisive, and very funny journey through the adolescence of the computer game industry, delving with wit and charm into the fascinating question of exactly whose story is being told."—Max Barry, author of Jennifer Government and Machine Man
7. • premium: True
   • source:
   • content:

     April 15, 2013
     Unsure of how his "life had failed to come together," Russell Marsh gets hired on as an "entry-level game designer" for Black Arts Studios in this second novel (after Soon I Will Be Invincible) from video game design consultant Grossman . But when co-founder Darren Ackerman suddenly resigns from his post and takes most of the "senior design and programming staff" with him, Russell is handed the lead design post for Realms of Gold VII. As he navigates between his own creative anxieties of how to design "the ultimate game" and making sure he doesn't "turn the hallowed Black Arts name into a joke," a bug appears in the memory of the WAFFLE software, the system "that powered Black Arts games first, to critical success" and begins "messing with" Russell's game. To unravel the mystery of the "Mournblade bug" Darren will have to comb through the fictional ages of the Realms of Gold franchise and his own past. Readers interested in software and game design will find some reward in Russell's reflections about life as a game designer, but these reflections, along with Russell's tangential back-story and surreal visits from characters of the gaming world saturate the plot, turning a neat science-fiction short story into a haphazard novel.

8. • premium: True
   • source:
   • content:

     March 1, 2013
     Calling all video gamers...here's a novel about designing, playing and ultimately becoming obsessed with fantasy and science-fiction games. The book involves two time periods: the halcyon early days of gaming, from 16-bit to 64-bit Commodore computing, and the contemporary world of realistic effects and virtual reality. One of the more significant questions the early pioneers wrestled with was, which is more important, the narrative arc of a story or graphics technology? While most opted for the former, one of the problems is that unpredictable and sometimes untoward things can and do happen in the world of games. Russell, the narrator of the story, had originally been one of the self-professed nerds who started writing code and creating games at a young age. He even graduated from college and had a year of law school before "dropping out" and joining some of his old friends at Black Arts games. The two leaders of this company were Simon, now deceased, and Darren, both held in awe by the gaming community. Simon was a true genius, with perfect scores on his SATs. Disdaining college, Simon developed a series of games that Russell discovers in a desk drawer. Meanwhile, Darren breaks away from Black Arts and takes most of the talent with him, leaving the inexperienced Russell in charge of designing a game that needs to be a blockbuster. Fantasy and reality get confused when Russell falls in love with a character on the screen. But, as he points out, why not? After all, she's "smart and confident and had amazing hair, and she was a princess." Reality is ever so much duller. While Russell becomes more and more obsessed with tracing Simon's legacy through the games he discovers, he begins to get equally involved in the game he's designing--and only negative things can come from this. While Grossman's imagination is fertile, the narrative is overly discursive and rambling.

     COPYRIGHT(2013) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

9. • premium: True
   • source:
   • content:

     October 1, 2012
     

     Russell is happy to be a part of Black Arts, the soaring new games studio where the industry's techiest techs work in unison. But the studio's hot new game seems to be suffering from a software glitch, and Russell finds himself in a race to save the game, his job, and his friends. The trouble dates back 20 years to some very human bugs. Expect Grossman, author of the best-selling Soon I Will Be Invincible and the creator of several popular games (Deus Ex, anyone?), to deliver sleek techno-brilliance with heart. If the name and face seem familiar, know that Grossman is Magiciansauthor and Time book critic Lev Grossman's twin.

     Copyright 2012 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

10. • premium: True
    • source:
    • content:

      Starred review from March 15, 2013
      Grossman, author of the delightful Soon I Will Be Invincible (2007), here draws on his own experience as a video-game designer to take us behind the scenes at Black Arts Games, a (fictional) video-game company poised to release a new version of one of its biggest hits. Russell, a new hire at the company (but an old friend of the company's founders), is thrown in at the deep end when a software bug is discovered that threatens to sink the new game. To find the source of the bug, Russell explores the history of the company, its founders, and his complicated relationships with them. Although it's structured as a mysteryRussell tries to track down the source of the bug the way a detective might pursue an unknown perpthe book is really a celebration of video games and their creators. It's full of terminology and dialogue that might seem like another language to the uninitiated reader (we do pick it up as we go along), but, mostly, due to his boundless enthusiasm for his story, Grossman never makes readers feel uninformed or left out in the cold. He invites us into the world of video games, introduces us to the people whose lives revolve around them, and makes us feel right at home. This is only Grossman's second novel, but, given the strength of this and his first book, we can only await his next offering with keen anticipation.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2013, American Library Association.)

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When Russell joins Black Arts games, brainchild of two visionary designers who were once his closest friends, he reunites with an eccentric crew of nerds hacking the frontiers of both technology and entertainment. In part, he's finally given up chasing the conventional path that has always seemed just out of reach. But mostly, he needs to know what happened to Simon, his strangest and most gifted friend, who died under mysterious circumstances soon after Black Arts' breakout hit.
As the company's revolutionary next-gen game is threatened by a software glitch, Russell finds himself in a race to save his job, Black Arts' legacy, and the people he has grown to care about. The deeper Russell digs, the more dangerous the glitch appears — and soon, Russell comes to realize there's much more is at stake than just one software company's bottom line.

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