Description

John Chu is a “sherpa” inside a role-playing game, With his crew–and for a hefty fee–he guides the wealthy through the levels of the game without all those pesky deaths and setbacks.

John’s new client is the pseudonymous Mr. Jones, who may or may not be the Korean dictator Kim Jong-un. The mysterious Ms. Pang may or may not be a Chinese agent and his mother, a genius cyber-terrorism agent may or may not be anyone in the game. It’s a wild ride with a fun, head-spinning twist at the end.

Underneath it all, Ruff continues to explore the overarching themes of his work: identity, puzzles, and the fluidity of the self. Like a number of his books it owes much to Philip K. Dick’s prescient mash-ups of pulp genre and cultural commentary.