Conor Kostic's Epic

The book that i read for my ISU is epic, by Connor Kostick. It is about a boy named Eric, on another planet, 1000 years in the future. The humans back then needed something to do on this long voyage to a distant world, so they created the game epic. It is a virtual reality video game that you “Clip into” and controls your in-game character. This kept them busy on the voyage, but when they founded on the new planet they used epic for more than just entertainment. They turned the game into the basis for everything in the government. The money was in-game money, violence was prohibited and all conflicts would be fought to the death inside the game in an arena with an amphitheatre for spectators. If you had a problem with the government, called Central Allocations, you could challenge them in the arena, if you won they had to negotiate and change what you deemed was the problem, if you lose, you lose everything, all of your armor,  weapons and acquired wealth. From this wealth, the CA was able to make their characters near to invincible, so the common people had no say.  Eric, a farm boy that plays epic during all his free time, he and his friends work for money by killing monsters such as the humanoid kobolds, or work in mines or other grueling dangerous tasks. Eric is obsessed with killing Inry’aat, the Red Dragon, he has died many times trying to kill this thing by himself and finally he gives up all hope of doing so and he created a new character against the norm, a female swashbuckler, a class no-one picks, and he spent all his points on beauty so she looked more like an NPC, and not like the grey pixelated faces of most players. When he enters the game he is greeted by NPC’s that normally never talk to you and even received a necklace as a gift from a merchant that was worth more than his friend made killing kobolds in a whole year. He discoverers that there is so many more ways to play this game than anyone thought. After his father is sent into exile after he is discovered by central allocations, for committing an act of violence in the past, Eric and his friend try to kill the red dragon one last time, and succeed by finding a glitch in it’s logic. He now becomes one of the richest people in the world from the dragons hoard and gains some unwanted attention from CA. This book is such a good one, and i would recommend it to anyone that likes fantasy, or plays mmorpg's.