Book Review: God is a Gamer
Title: God is a Gamer
Author: Ravi Subramanian
Publisher: Penguin
Genre: Thriller (Bitcoin Thriller)
What happens when you cross gamer, banker, politician and terrorist with virtual money?
I love reading thrillers and I always look forward to reading them. So when God is a Gamer was up for review on blogadda.com, I gladly signed up for it. God is a Gamer is not just a thriller it is a bitcoin thriller to be precise.
The story is set in Mumbai and the USA. In USA, a politician close to the President is assassinated. And the investigations begin. In the Mumbai branch of NYIB, a lot of office politics is going on and poor Swami hates his boss Malvika. He shares all his troubles with his friend Aditya Rao, who was his mentor in NYIB when he joined. Aditya is now an entrepreneur who runs two companies- eTios- a BPO company that he first started and Indiscape- an online gaming company. When Malvika is promoted as the chairman of NYIB, Swami expects to be crowned as the new CEO but sadly that doesn’t happen. He rushes to Aditya who had problems of his own. The number of people interested in Indiscape seems to be reducing and he also has personal problems to deal with. His long lost son Varun is arrested and he calls him for help. Once Varun is released, he joins Indiscape and with his new ideas he pushes Indiscape’s game Townsville to be on top of the gaming charts.And then Malvika dies mysteriously- whether a suicide or a murder nobody knows. And the blame is on the Finance Minster. Varun is close to Tanya, Malvika’s daughter whom he met before in Rio and Goa.
In the US, the FBI is working towards cracking the assassination case, but is nowhere close to solving it. And then there is ATM heist, and 5 million dollars are swiped off in a short duration. The investigation leads them to Cotton Trail- a place for buying anything anonymously and the transactions are made only through bitcoins. The investigation leads them to India and the FBI and CBI are both working to solve the case, but the case reaches a dead end. Some more connections are made, some more interrogations take place and new facts are uncovered. And the end is unexpected.
The whole books shuttles between Mumbai and USA. The first few chapters hence seem to be unconnected. But the story moves at a fast pace in the beginning. The short and simple chapters make it an easy read. The unconnected dots begin to get connected. Banking, bitcoins, gaming all are thrown into the picture. The interest keeps building as the story progresses.
But the story tends to get a little boring in between and some part of it seems to make no sense at all. There too many characters in the story some of which I think were not necessary. The increasing number of characters makes it a little confusing. But what disappointed me the most was that bitcoins were not so central to the story. The other events and ideas pushed the bitcoins to the backdrop.
The bitcoin thriller thus has its ups and downs. But the thriller factor is there and that makes this book a good read if not the best.
My rating: 3.5/5
This review is a part of the biggest Book Review Program for Indian Bloggers. Participate now to get free books!
Also this post is written for Day 22 of the Ultimate Blog Challenge.
