Enter the Meta

by Colette Bennett

Overview

Lissa is obsessed with Ancestral, the latest and greatest battle arena co-op game out there—and she's really good at it. If she wants to get to the top, she will have to band together with her best friend Ji-Soo—and their friends Ray, Zio, Jae-Jin and Lucas—to become Team Phoenix. With the support of former pro Esport-player, Devon, Team Phoenix trains day and night for the upcoming Regional Championships.

But
the road to victory has its twists and turns: Lissa is haunted by the loss of
her brother, Ji-Soo's got a crush on Jae-Jin, and they’re
up against the number one team in the region, Mastermind, a
group of frat boys who aren't afraid to play dirty. The odds feel stacked
against them, but Team Phoenix is determined to rise from the ashes.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781786188700
Publisher:	Rebellion Publishing Ltd
Publication date:	01/17/2023
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	400
File size:	1 MB

About the Author

Colette Bennett is a New Orleans-born writer driven by a love of video games, pop culture, and horror fiction. A journalist since 2007, her work has appeared on national news outlets such as CNN and Yahoo as well as gaming sites Kotaku, Joystiq, Destructoid, Touch Arcade, and GamesIndustry.biz. Her short stories in print can be found in The Corona Book of Science Fiction and The Corona Book of Horror. She lives in Atlanta with her husband and three extremely needy cats. Enter the Meta is her first novel.

Editorial Reviews

2022-10-27
Competitive gamers seek glory at the regional championship.

Lissa Walker loves the Multiplayer Online Battle Arena game Ancestral in which she and fellow players on Team Phoenix work together in fantasy combat. Her teammates include best friend Ji-Soo, serious Jae-Jin, and newcomer Ray. At the community PlaySpace, run by their mentor, Devon, the gang works on their battle strategies, both in-game and interpersonally. As the regional championship approaches, they face Team Mastermind, a group of alcoholic energy drink–fueled frat boys who employ unscrupulous methods for achieving victory. Bennett’s debut novel is an intriguing look at the culture around esports. Lissa and her friends are older teens and 20-somethings, yet the messaging regarding the importance of teamwork feels reductive and overly insistent; older readers may find this aspect of the book overly saccharine. The diverse group of characters—Ray and Lissa, who are queer, read White by default, Jae-Jin and Ji-Soo are Korean American, and Devon is Black—are sympathetic but tend toward caricature, making for a superficial feel. Gentle romances twine throughout, juxtaposed against the bloody battle scenes. The digital world of Ancestral is fascinatingly rendered, coming across as both novel and recognizable to gamers. The happy ending feels a bit rushed and contrived, but readers will ultimately cheer for this not-quite-underdog team.

An originally wrought but flawed exploration of esports. (Fiction. 14-18)

Kirkus Reviews