Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow

It's been a while since I read a book that I truly struggled to put down, but this was one.

It's such a simple story: two people, who have a deep, abiding friendship but who also carry deep, abiding trauma, grow up together and make successful video games.

I wasn't sold on the idea of video games—I played them lots when I was younger but I've never quite grokked people who make video games their thing—but the games were less a theme and more of a vehicle for the themes of love and friendship that form the backbone of the novel.

The characters here are no more eloquent than the ones in Ninth House, but this all felt real. The stakes felt higher because these people acted like real people; it felt true.

Maybe it resonated a little bit more with me because there are people in my own past whom I've lost touch with but whose absence is felt—people with whom I had a real connection and real friendship and whom I let slip away during one of the international moves I made from like 2008-2017.

Though I'm not sure I've ever felt quite as passionate about anything as these people feel about gaming. Maybe that's why I am where I am today.