You will love Soda Pop Soldier by Nick Cole. And if the name sounds familiar, it’s because he is the author of The Old Man and the Wasteland. You know, the first book in The Wasteland Saga. If you missed it, please read it, too. You won’t regret it.
Soda Pop Soldier is written in a different style than Wasteland, but is also a thing of beauty. You get into the head of PerfectQuestion and, if you are like me, find that you don’t want to leave his world. Which is not at all what I was expecting. While I loved The Wasteland Saga and the post-apocalyptic setting, along with the parallels to The Old Man and the Sea, I’m not a gamer. The last system I owned was Intellivision. So yes, it’s been a while.
But it doesn’t make any difference if you are into gaming or not. That’s the beauty of what Nick Cole has achieved with Soda Pop Soldier. He makes you care about the characters and what is going on in both the real and virtual words in which the novel takes place. It’s been several years since I read William Gibson’s Neuromancer, but it came to mind several times while reading this. The gamers aren’t jacked into the ‘net, but the gaming world they are playing in seems very real at times, just the same.
Part of the fun going on in this world are all the references the author makes to things we are all familiar with today, even though this takes place in a future that has space colonization. From famous movie phrases to TV shows, there are plenty of hidden gems that will make you smile.
This book is not to be missed and I give it my highest recommendation.
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