One of the critic excerpts on the inside cover calls this book an allegory. I'm not sure I'd go that far, but the author was certainly trying to convey some kind of message. It didn't work terribly well...
There are, as the aforementioned critic says, two parts to the "meaning" in this book. The first has to do with politics. The second has to do with gaming. This works because the game is the government.
Okay, to explain: A group of people decide Earth is too violent and set off to colonize a new world, where violence is absolutely prohibited. To keep themselves occupied during the long trip over, someone somehow develops a game called Epic. Violence is okay in the game, so people use it instead of actually fighting. Over time, and after they reach their new world, they continue to use the game in that way, and naturally it develops that the people who are the strongest in the game get to make the decisions. Lah de dah, time passes, and everything revolves around the game. Want to earn money? Go kill monsters. It's not real money but the game's economy is more important than the real one anyway. Want to be admitted to the Academy? Prove your worth in a series of graduation tournaments in the game. Want to appeal a decision of the government? You'll have to win a battle in the arena to be heard.
The game itself, Epic, comes across as basically the ultimate MMORPG, except there's not exactly much role-playing. (Most people give their characters their own names to facilitate identification in-game.) The author was careful to avoid going too in-depth in the actual game mechanics, but characters have stat points, they have skills, and they have equipment. Nowhere is any mention made of levels, but there is one quick reference to having to gain skills... whether or not characters improve inherently over time (and experience) is never really explored, overshadowed by the dominance equipment holds.
The reason the government is seen as oppressive is mostly because their character have the best equipment around, allowing them to easily defeat anybody who challenges them. The people on the government are merely those who have the best characters, and the people who have the best characters are those who are on the government, because they have the resources to give their characters the best stuff. Doesn't seem terribly fair, does it?
I should note that there's a very, very important difference between Epic and every existing MMO when it comes to equipment, and that is: there's no top tier. Unique weapons are actually unique, but the game is so expansive that there are a whole lot of them; they vary in power, but just because you find a sword today that's the best in the whole game doesn't mean tomorrow someone else won't find one even better. Not even the government can just give themselves equipment--they have to find it or buy it from NPCs like everyone else.
(Side-note: Perhaps another important difference is that nobody's maintaining the game. There are no developers or GMs or anything of that sort. It maintains itself. And is, apparently, bug-free.)
So the lives of people who want to improve their lot in life are spent in the game, grinding away, improving their characters with the hope that if they can get strong enough in the game, a better life out of game will naturally follow.
So. Meaning. To quote the review in question: "[...] the pointless wastefulness of a government too big to correct its course or even know its true nature, and, on a slightly more trivial note, the waste of time gamers spend in their online 'second lives.'"
Oh, no. No no no.
Too big? A government consisting entirely of roughly a dozen people is too big? Or possibly not entirely, as presumably they have people below them to handle fun things like paperwork, but otherwise they are the government all by themselves. And anyway, it's not the government's inherent flaws that bring it down. They drive the protagonist, they push things towards the climax, but the final confrontation ends up being about something else entirely. No, the fall of the government is because of one corrupt member who ruins things for everyone. He wants to be the single most powerful character in the game so he will be, effectively, a dictator... Okay, so maybe it's trying to warn against that kind of corruption, except what exactly is the warning? Don't make it so easy for one person to take control? Yeah, thanks, we don't.
I mean, there's probably a fair bunch of stuff someone more politically-minded could pick out as being all deep or something, but I just don't see it. So instead I'm going to talk about the one that actually interests me: the gaming.
It's possible the author intended the "meaning" here to be just what the critic thinks it is: a condemnation of wasting time playing games. There's a problem with that, though. At no point does anybody in the story waste time playing games. In fact a big part of the problem is how it's become necessary to play.
There are people who play MMORPGs the way most people play Epic--with the sole goal of getting more and better stuff. In our boring little real world, it is possible to look down on them for investing too much time and effort into non-real gains, especially if you can't imagine that style of playing as being fun. In Epic, however, the time and effort spent is for real gain.
The book does spend a decent amount of time talking about the expansive world inside the game which nobody bothers to explore anymore--people stick to the places and classes they know lead to slow but steady gain. They play a fighter, say, and go grind monsters outside the city; meanwhile there are a bunch of classes that could gain money other ways but nobody takes the risk of experimenting. So the book's "meaning" here could be an attack on those gamers who get stuck in their method of playing, who condemn any playstyle which isn't their own. It could be an exhortation to gamers to actually have fun while playing. It could be... any number of things, really. Except it really can't be that people waste too much time playing games, however true that may be.
Getting away from the whole "meaning" thing, I'm kind of impressed by how lightly the book handles a lot of the gaming stuff. I come from a position of being very familiar with MMORPGs, having played a ton--several subscription-based, several more not. I could easily fill in the blanks with what I imagined Epic being like... but I think someone who's never played one in their life would be able to follow the gaming stuff just fine. I can't be sure, obviously, but it left enough vague that most of the missing details aren't confusing.
I have to take a moment, however, to be annoyed that the book randomly starts doing something near the climax--it puts "heal" in quotes. Heal as in "I need a 'heal'." It's the only bit of gaming terminology singled out as abnormal, and I have to wonder if some editor got antsy about it, because I can't think of a justification for it otherwise.
Anyway, what about the actual story? Abandoning everything about "meaning" and all that, speaking purely from an entertainment standpoint... it entertained. It was fun, it really was.
And the blurb about the sequel is so weird I'm really going to have to find and read that one, too, just to figure out how it makes any sense.
