Cory Doctorow

Anda is a high school student who loves making and playing video games. When she gets invited to be in an all-girl guild, she convinces her mom to let her play a fantasy massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) (similar to World of Warcraft). The other guild members are on a mission to stop “gold miners” - users who are paid to spend hours collecting loot in the game for their boss to sell in the real world for real money. On one mission Anda stops to talk to one of the gold miners, Raymond, and realizes he's just a normal worker with a terrible boss, like her dad, who loves the game, like her. She convinces Raymond, who lives in China, to try to get his coworkers to go on strike for better healthcare, but it doesn't go as planned.

This is really the ideal example of the graphic novel format. Most of the story takes place inside the game and it's much more efficient to show that visually than try to describe it. The art is beautiful and descriptive, both inside and outside of the game. This book is 10 years old now, and the story feels pretty quaint. Gray-area online industry has moved out of the gaming world and into scam phone calls and Twitter bots. I can't imagine anyone really caring about eliminating a few gold miners now. Raymond's plot wraps up too nicely - he gets fired for trying to organize but then just gets another better job. I did really love Anda’s real-life ending, though. She learns to stand up for less fortunate people, whether they have material needs or just need a friend.… (more)

Less pointed than many of Cory's works, there's a not very sly dig at cryptocurrencies - any of them - mostly for being a lot of hype and burning a remarkable amount of power, but that's about it. The central character is not that relatable being a rich old white man who's made his money and fame digging out the identity of people evading (not avoiding) paying tax. He helps a friend who's had some cypto-details stolen, and this bring him to the attention of a couple of competing 'foreign' gangsters. But it's easy to hide when you have disposable income although now he's defending his identity rather than hunting, and has to be lucky all the time instead of just once.… (more)