What happens when a boy who was playing the wrong game at the wrong time during the Satanic Panic of the 80's ends up in magic jail, manages to continue gaming play-by-post for thirty years, stages a jailbreak after that thirty years passes to attend a gaming convention, and is accidentally in just the right position with just the right education in occultism from being in magic jail for thirty years to see that the new game being promoted at the convention is actually really occult and really scary and evil?

If you would like to know the answer to that question, read this book!

Poor Derek was just trying to run a D&D game for a couple of friends when some paranoid parents reported his doings to the wrong people (the Laundry). The Laundry, with its mission to keep amateur sorcerers from going pro on their own and maybe accidentally triggering an occult manifestation that could end the world, got a bit overzealous and dragged 14 year old Derek and his buddies off to a secure place that not everyone gets to come back from. Eventually Derek's friends were let go but Derek himself fell through some bureaucratic cracks which were not made better by the desire of the Laundry to avoid embarrassment, and before he knew it, he was a lifer in the holding system for dangerous magicians despite never having cast a spell in his life (except in D&D).

Derek sort of accepted his lot and made the best of a bad situation until motive means and opportunity came along in a perfect storm for him to be able to skedaddle and attend a gaming convention and maybe even play in person with the folks he'd been running a play by post game for from jail.

As a long-term gamer myself who also started during the Satanic Panic and whose parents thought I was endangering my soul, I could feel for poor Derek. He's just a basically nice guy who happens to have learned some really scary stuff from decades of being locked up with a bunch of dangerous wizards. Charles Stross was also around and a part of the very early parts of the advent of D&D and you can see his love of the game in this book. There's a lot of nostalgia, many Easter eggs, and that was a lot of fun.

I didn't rate the book higher because it's basically about the fantasy of "what if you turned into your DND character and had to survive an adventure somehow" and I think that the author was trying to avoid being too much indebted to D&D particulars. It's a difficult needle to thread. How do you engage readers who have never played and entertain them while also getting buy-in from those who know very,very well what you are talking about? In the end, the grind of the adventure felt like it got short-changed because of the necessity to do a lot of lead-up and exposition. I still had fun! It just didn't entirely scratch that very specific itch I have for the "drop into a D&D world" scenario.

The imaginative twist of using D&D dice to battle a looming evil in a LARP game is both inventive and thrilling. With its clever blend of speculative fiction and satire, this story delivers a compelling, fast-paced ride that keeps you guessing. If you’re into sci-fi with a sharp edge and a touch of geeky nostalgia, this book is a must-read.