Back forever ago, I used to rave about the Dream Park books. They were everything I imagined good imaginative fiction ought to be when it's right next door to us but catering big time to the whole gamer crowd that's out there.

What I mean is it's a SF and Fantasy fan's dream, mixed with LARPing and such a huge budget. Before, we were dealing with a fantasy theme park pulling out all the stops for the Princess of Mars or Voodoo mysteries and mixing it all with high-tech hijinx and murder and real mystery all along. This is well before the days of Ready Player One and even before Tad Williams' Otherland series.

I really wanted to like visiting the real Moon and having an all-out Wellsian adventure, adding a total steampunkian theme with magic users, thieves, and princes... and because this takes place at a much later date than the other Dream Parks, we're actually having the full-blown adventure ON the moon.

Cool, right? LARP it up with full props and live cameras and a world betting on your death, and don't forget the massive rewards and sponsorships!

Well, um... maybe I never got into the actual characters in this one. I liked the twists and turns in the overall plot and I have no issues with crossover books as long as the excitement is high, but the people I actually needed to root for were kinda lacking. There might have been a few other issues, too, but that's the big one for me.

Even so, there was a ton of cool action and surprises and as a straight adventure, it hits all the right geek buttons, classic SF buttons, and modern gamer buttons. This totally panders to us. :) It doesn't save the novel from the issues I brought up, but it did keep me reading with a good deal of interest. That's not all that bad. :) ( )

Set a generation after the third book in the Dream Park series, this book was interesting, but less compelling than the previous books. I enjoyed it more for the continuation of the Dream Park theme than for the depth of its characters or the cleverness of the story.

Worth reading if you're fond of the Dream Park series. ( )

Son, I am disappoint. I'm sure English majors all across the world will want to crucify me for actually using an internet meme in what should be a serious review, but since the editing in Niven and Barnes' The Moon Maze Game is about as atrocious as LOLCat speak, I'm sure any resident deities up there will forgive me. Almost 20 years after The California Voodoo Game we find another installment in Niven and Barnes' Dream Park series.

The plot? In the African Kingdom of Kikaya, a rebel force is gathering strength, waiting for the moment to strike. As Cowles Industries prepares to launch the first ever game to take place on Earth's moon and Kikaya's crown prince is entered as a player, they see their chance to finally take control of their country again. Scotty Griffin, son of Dream Park's Alex Griffin and Millicent Summers, is hired to be his bodyguard both in and out of the game. Once inside, a team of professional kidnappers strike and a game of cat and mouse begins. Sound interesting? Well, it's not the prettiest baby in the crib, so to speak. It looks up at its far more talented, witty and engrossing siblings and drools a bit.

See, the thing that connected all Dream Park books was their blending of mythology and adventure, with a dash of crime thrown in for good measure. They were a young LARPer's wet dream, envisioning the kind of technology we all could only dream of as we whacked eachother with foam-padded swords and argued loudly over whether or not someone was ignoring hits. This latest installment diverges from the format and is more like Die Hard VIII: Die in Space as opposed to the feel of the former books. The characters are less fleshed out and less engaging, the mythology and adventure behind the game is less developed, the subplots don't really come to the fore, the editing as said is absolutely awful (with a character suddenly being referred to by another name, pieces of dialogue resurfacing almost ad verbatim as if a hold-over from an earlier rewrite, a reference to a male character as 'she') and the crime story that takes over the novel feels underdeveloped and rushed. Actually, this entire book feels like it was a rush job to grab a bit more revenue in a society that has embraced gaming as it hadn't when 'The California Voodoo Game' came out in 1992. In a way I'm sorry I read this book, I guess it killed a good memory. ( )

The Moon Maze Game is the fourth in a sporadic series of novels co-written by Niven and Barnes which revolve around Live Action Role Playing gamers and the Dream Park corporation. The first three books in the series (Dream Park [1981], The Barsoom Project [1989], and The California Voodoo Game [1992]) were all set on earth and involved complex multi-layered plots incorporating quirky characters, believable technological advances and thriller elements. For the fourth book, set decades from now, the action has moved to the moon, where humanity has had an industrial and recreational colony for some time. When the first off-world LARPing game is announced to take place on the moon, the creme-de-la-creme of Gamemasters, Loremasters and regular gamers compete to secure positions in "the game". Among the players is the scion to an African nation's leader, and when terrorists attempt to kidnap him within the framework of the "game", what had been a challenging but ultimately only ego-brusing competition becomes a life-and-death struggle. Trapped within a fictional storyline of Victorian-era space explorers on the moon, the gamers find themselves trying to stay one step ahead of political revolutionaries and mercenaries, with ideological fervor and vengence on their side. This was a solid action-adventure thriller with a good scifi flavor and setting. Those who enjoyed the earlier three books will appreciate the next-generation ties to characters and events set earlier in the timeline. While I enjoyed it and do recommend it, the ending felt a bit rushed, and the "bad guys" were somewhat two-dimensional. Readers should really give Dream Park and The California Voodoo Game a read first! [If you enjoy this, you may also wish to try the other three books in the series. Also the Guardians of the Flame series by Joel Rosenberg, in which fantasy Role Playing Gamers find themselves transported to a real world that plays by the game's rules.]

Originally written for my local library's website: http://www.lincolnlibraries.org/depts/bookguide/srec/staffrec11-10.htm ( )