Review: Into the Real by Ringo and Lydia Sherrer

Ringo took Pokemon Go and turned it into Ender's Game.

Some years ago, when the augmented reality game Pokemon Go first came out, I mostly heard about it from its biggest fan: John Ringo.

Like every good author, Ringo took something from his life, and weaponized it for a novel.

And, it being a John Ringo novel, that requires weaponizing it on multiple levels, including as a real weapon.

In the case of Into the Real, written with Lydia Sherrer, they took Pokemon Go and turned it into Ender's Game.

The story

Larry "The Snake" Coughlin is an internet mercenary, a top tier game player for hire. Hire him to rid yourself of annoying opposition in your online video games. Except "Larry Coughlin" is really Lynn Raven, a 17-year-old high school girl. When the CEO of the biggest video game company in the world reaches out to her to beta test his new Augmented Reality game, she is hesitant. An AR game means she has to go .... outside and deal with ... people. Even worse, Lynn eventually has to work in teams, especially when the company offers a contest where the grand prize is five million dollars and a guaranteed job in the game industry.

I must admit, "John Ringo" and "YA" do not fit easily together in the brain. But it's executed perfectly well here. I have no idea how much is Ringo's concept or Sherrer's execution. Either way, it works perfectly.

Despite the fact that there are no mortal stakes involved here, Into the Real keeps up the pace admirably. There is no threat to life and limb, and a very rare threat of bodily harm, but for the most part, there are no slow bits. Sure, some fight scenes drag on too long, mostly because the reader understands that there is no genuine threat to our characters... that we know of.

If there is one big problem to the novel, it's that the reader knows what's going on, though the characters haven't put it together. When the monsters of the Into the Real game feed on electricity, and there are power fluctuations and blackouts throughout the entire country, it's easy for us to put two and two together before a third of the way into the book. It ends on a To Be Continued without more than hinting at what the reader suspects.

And only 40% of the way into the book, we get an exchange that goes

"When we say these entities.... are unknown, we mean we don't even know what they are. The data is encrypted and how the AI assigns them is also unknown."

On top of everything else, all one can think is "Gee, what can go wrong?"

Trust me, these aren't spoilers. The overall story of the "TransDimentional Hunter" novels is advanced entirely by seeing Lynn on her journey from gamer to leader, and it's quite fun. It suffers  a little from feeling like it is only the first part of a novel... until you realize that there is no way the events of this book could have been handled any other way. You're just going to have to buy another Ringo novel to see how the story pans out.

The characters

Lynn Raven is an unusually likeable teenager. The daughter of a widowed single mother, Lynn has long ago monetized her video game exploits, generating a steady income via microtransactions. She is smart, capable, and even her foibles are relatable. Seriously, who likes interacting with teenagers or people?

It is also fun watching Lynn's character develop over the course of the book, going from gamer physique and finding out how sunburns work, to someone more formidable.

The second main character is Hugo, the AI that comes with the Into the Real game, and is basically Jarvis from the Marvel films, complete with British accent and snarky dialogue.

As for the others characters, there are none of the usual YA formulas in Into the Real. The school bully isn't some copy and paste reject from Mean Girls, she is her own unique brand of psychotic.

The only thing that felt formulaic may have been the introduction of Lynn's friends. Mercifully, they turn out to be deeper than they appear.

The only irksome protagonist is one character who insists "Girls can't game," despite all evidence Lynn presents to the contrary. (As I grew up having to fight my mother and sister for control of the Game Boy growing up, the stereotype never made sense.) Push through these sections, and you will be rewarded. Like the rest, he is no shallow stereotype, as one might expect from a YA novel.

The world

Easily half of this book is world-building.  Lynn's beta testing involves a lot of explanation as she pulls and prods the inner workings of the game in her attempts to push it to its limits... and as Lynn tries to find glitches to exploit and hacks to the game, like every other gamer. Lynn's exploration covers  both the technology of gaming as well as the world-building of the game. Of the first 20% of the book, easily 14% of the book is the game and the mechanics.

If you're not into technology or the world-building... then why are you reading science fiction?

One of the major, obvious Ringo touches is that the book gets into the nitty gritty of just how things work. The game IA monitors the gamer and can contact emergency services if things go wrong. There are a lot of details on weapon classes and armor sets, and how microtransactions now work. It's also a game that comes with customer support and tactical support.

The world contains an element that pisses me off in that it has long-lasting impacts of Coronavirus lockdowns--all modern theaters are dead, replaced by VR movie cafes, half of education includes VR automatons, and doctors are always looking for the next novel virus. I don't hate that Ringo and Sherrer have this view of the future, I hate that they might be right.

And some of the game is cute. Healing capsules are called Oneg, The werewolf like monsters are the Varg (paging Jim Butcher). There is a shotgun referred to as the Abomination, which I think is the second Larry Correia reference (the first being, I believe, Larry Coughlin).

The politics

As this book does not spell out anything too clearly by the end, you can garner a message if you squint real hard, tilt your head sideways, and stretch like a pretzel: That big business and civilian individuals can do a job better than the federal government.

Also, part of the moral of the story is that you should pay attention to current events.

Content warning

You can tell that John Ringo didn't write the bulk of this novel for the simple reason that it is obviously YA, and this includes the content.

If you're worried about “video game violence” … then I deeply worry about you, since there is no correlation between video games and violence. Since a third of American households own a game console (not counting PCs) if video games meant violence, we'd be hip deep in blood.

Who is it for?

If you liked Ender's Game, or even video games, you're going to enjoy Into the Real.

Why read it?

Ringo and Sherrer have created a modern day Ender's Game using the technology of Pokemon Go. The characters are vivid and interesting, and the action is strong enough to carry you along.