I went into "In Real Life" with high expectations- several book reviewers I follow (and trust their taste in books) were RAVING about this. People were practically drooling over this graphic novel, and I couldn't wait to read it.
I don't understand that hype anymore. "In Real Life" has an interesting concept and a cool variety of strong, female characters, but overall, the storyline falls flat and the artwork leaves something to be desired.

The story revolves around Anda, a girl who has recently discovered a MMRPG called Coarsegold Online, where she can go on cool quests, fight fantasy creatures, and talk to other women in guilds. She teams up with an avatar named Sarge who convinces Anda to help her slay "gold farmers" - avatars who are simply gathering virtual gold in the game and then selling that virtual gold to players in real life. After doing so, Anda meets and talks to one of these "gold farmers" and finds out that he is a boy named Raymond living in China. He works as a gold farmer many hours a week- it's one of the only jobs he can get.
Slowly, Anda becomes torn between wanting to stay true to the Coarsegold standards and not let gold farming continue, and doing what she feels may be right by trying to help Raymond shape his life in a better way.

Like I said, this had a very interesting plot, and I really liked the tie-ins to economics and real life situations (like Doctorow discussed in his prologue). But these themes feel very weak throughout, and they're not as fully explored as I feel they could have been. For example, when Anda begins asking her father about how strikes work, I think there was definitely an opportunity there for a deeper discussion.
There is also a lot of "waste" in this book- wasted time and wasted space. For instance,during the course of the novel, one of Anda's schoolmates tries to convince Anda's D&D group to be a part of the new Board Game Club. This is brought up again near the end, but this adds almost NO substance to the book at all! That time could have been spent further developing the plot or the topic of economics and gaming.
Also, I'm very unimpressed with the artwork by Jen Wang here. Like a lot of people say, I think the colors are very pretty, and the characters are well drawn. But her backgrounds are very very lazily drawn. Sometimes there is no background, just a white page. Mostly it is a simple wash of color. Even within the Coarsegold game, which is a place of fantasy and cool stuff, the backgrounds are unimpressive. There are a couple of nice buildings or the hint of a forest a few times, but mostly, they're large, empty space with just a splash of green color.

I really want to like this graphic novel. It is a cool book to hold and flip through, but honestly, I think everything could have just been more well-developed. I'd be willing to read something else either Doctorow or Wang worked on, but it's going to be with much lower expectations ( )

Fun read, nice illustrations. Deals with some serious issue of digital economy and its impact on people's lives. ( )

I liked this sweet short book about a young gamer being introduced to the problems of the real world via people she meets in an online game. The illustrations were stylized, imparting a ton of information about the characters and their feelings. I think the story was a little to feel-good for the realities of the topic. ( )

Story: 5.0 / 10
Characters: 8
Setting: 7
Prose: 7
Drawing: 8

Tags: Gaming, MMO, work, leisure, advice, judgement ( )

I really enjoyed this read. I thought this story was super fast pace story. I loved how this book focused on girls and the gaming life. I also really enjoyed the art style of this graphic novel. I really loved this face pace story and also really loved the harder issues this tackled. I also enjoyed the under currents of romance that was present this story def put a smile on my face. I really hope to read more by this author in the future. ( )