Review: The Lovechild of "A Midsummer Night's Dream" and "The Matrix"
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 02 2, 2014
This is an awesome book with a unique spin on incorporating the fairy realm into our own. John Golden works in IT, he is a debugger, and his job is to delve into computer networks and eliminate fairy infestations. When I say he delves into computer networks, I mean that he can move himself into a different dimension called a burrow where the network and the fairy infestation are manifested as a sword and sorcery medieval world, and once inside the burrow he can get to work exterminating the fairy presence. Its kind of like The Matrix meets A Midsummer Night's Dream.This book is full of lots of geeky / nerdy / pop-culture references and plays on words (like when John Golden learned how to program in KOBOLD), and has been written in a unique way with the main character's sister providing something similar to director's commentary as footnotes to the story. I feel like the footnotes are a little too frequent and slightly jarring at the start of the book, but after reaching the first quarter mark they started to feel much more like a natural extension of the story. The humour is quite dry and understated, constructed from observations of how IT support is largely treated. If you have ever worked in IT or if you enjoy watching The IT Crowd, then I think you will really get a kick out of this book.