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The Game Kids serie by L. Pendragon is a serie of book a lot of people seem convinced I wrote, for some reason. I didn't, to be clear, though I am taking it as a sign that I should talk more about my own stuff in the future. To stay on the topic though: it is a damn good serie, which you should read, and here I'll tell you why.

The Genre

Before we go into the really meaty stuff, I'd like to talk about the genre of these books. Specifically... that, well, they're kinda hard to fit in a specific genre. Consequently, explaining the premise and what you should expect from these is a bit hard. If you've ever tried to explain homestuck to someone, you know the feeling- though this serie never reaches homestuck levels of complexity. Whether this is a selling point or not is up to you.

For the sake of this manifesto though, I will tentatively classify these books as romance/YA/sci-fi. There are teenagers fucking around, there are big technological advancements that are not realistic for our time, and there are people in unhinged love.

The Premise

The story follows Danten a kid attending a very prestigious boarding school. He's also a very scared kid. Scared of what? Everything. Others. Himself. Demons. Unfortunately, or fortunately, (tunately, you might say) he ends up rooming with Petel, a wolf who becomes deeply intrigued by Dante's jumpiness, and who endeavors to get him in the squad one way or another. Through shenanigans, those two & the rest of the gang ends up finding a weird video game hidden within the school. I mean "spits out an NPC into the real world" level of weird. The kids don't really care about the mystery though, they found a cool game they want to play the cool game. I'm sure this will not have an consequences whatsoever.

So, let's go over that summary real quick, shall we?

The Worldbuilding

If you're like me, you probably read these summaries and thought: ok, so, uh, demons are a thing? Or is that Dante being paranoid? What about Petel? "Petel is a wolf" is that. Literal?

The story never hands out these answers to you. You will never sit through ten pages of expositions on how the world works. It's up to you to figure out how much of what you're told is literal, how much is metaphorical, and how much of what is happening here is normal by the standards of this universe. Which is, personally, something I really like. I like playing connect the dots. I like when the story trusts me to figure things out. I like when stories are kinda ambiguous. This book is really good at show-don't-tell, and I appreciate it very much.

The Game

There's been a couple times where I brought this book up to people, and I got a response along the lines of "a VR game? Like Sword Art Online?" So I wanna clarify: this book is nothing like SAO. Not meant as a judgement on the quality of SAO, I mean that the angle tackled is absolutely not an isekai one, and instead much closer to something like Bofuri or Shangri-La-Frontier. It's a game, and the characters treat it as such; they're here to have fun, fuck around, and possibly find out how to break the code for funsies. The only person who takes it seriously is the NPC they pull out, who is very eager to remind everyone that hey my kingdom is in danger I need you guys to fix this shit, but as far as everyone else is concerned the game is a place to have fun, and the weird part is that the game followed them to the real world, not the other way around.

Also, quick sidenote, but it's very obvious through the writing that the author Gets how videogames work (both in the "this is how games are meant to be played" and in the "this is how games are made") which is very appreciated. When someone runs into a bug, you can very much get why/how and you will probably be reminded of a couple insane speedruns you've seen going around.

The Characters

The books focus mainly on Dante and Petel, but it's worth noting that this book has a large cast of characters. While I won't be able to name them all to you right now (the curse of being in a fandom too small to have a wiki,) I do want to note that at no point during the narration have I ever felt confused when someone was talking. I never had any moment of "wait, who's this bitch again." The characters all have very strong voices and roles, which is truly a feat in a cast that big.

Other thing about the cast: they're really... realistic in their unrealism, if I can say. Everyone is weird as fuck. But also, they're weird in ways that are very believable for teens to be weird. Like, yeah, "Abraham is constantly talking about how much he wants to commit manslaughter on one specific dude" is a weirdo move, but at the same time, have you never met an edgy teen with a grudge? They all act like very believable teenagers. Which is also something I appreciate, as someone who read way too many this character is basically a tiny adult stories.

Also they're weird. I like weird bitches. They make for some really entertaining interactions. There is not a single character you can point at and go "oh this one is the boring one" no they're all off their rockers in some way and I'm living for it.

So that's the main cast, but what about Dante and Petel? Together, they have a really fun dynamic. Individually, they're characters with very strong convictions and perceptions of themselves, which makes them the least reliable narrators on earth. That's not to say they'll ever outright lie to you, but they are extremely biased. See my paragraph on the worldbuilding and how the story rarely if ever state things out for you; Dante and Petel will both tell you with absolute conviction "x event is happening," and it's up to you to see how the other characters react and therefore if this is real or a wild interpretation of events.

So, that's all I got to say on the premise. A quick sidenote though:

Queer Representation

I rarely bring up representation when I talk about books, because there's a difference between "this story has queer characters" and "this story is about queerness" and it's kinda a nightmare to be looking for the later and to be constantly recced the former. That being said, I know it matters to a lot of people, so: yes, a lot of the cast is queer. And not queer as in "LG(maybe B) representation and nothing else" you've also got trans, nonbinary, aro, ace (! can you fucking believe!) and "my relationship to my gender and/or sexuality is so tangled it'd make the average republican explode" rep. If you're specifically looking for a YA story with casual queer rep, forget all the bullshit I said previously and go for this one, it's quite good.

Quick Sidenote on the Serie Itself

The Game Kids serie is a self-published serie- ie, there's no publisher to do the marketing and all the other nasty bits. That's why it's obscure as fuck. If you're like me and you want to read more niche stories you would normally never hear of, you really ought to give that one a try.

TL;DR

The game Kids serie is a queer YA about a bunch of kids fucking around playing a game and uncovering family mysteries along the way. The cast is good. The worldbuilding is good. And guess what! You can get them digitally for free! Or you can buy the paperback on amazon, it's like ten bucks.

(Regardless, if you read it and like it, remember to drop a rating and/or a review somewhere, or even just like. Talk about it to friends. Again, this is a self-published book. Every bit of promotion helps ^^)