New Rock New Role by Richard Sparks

Book Review

Sarah Deeming

Within seconds of winning the RPG Grand Championship, Daxx and his friends, Grell and Qrystal, are ripped from the virtual world and separated into a real-life fantasy world. Daxx has been turned into his avatar, a healing mage, but without any of the skills and powers he had developed in the game for his avatar. He must relearn everything he already knew, plus the rules of this new world, in order to survive and find a way home.

The best way to describe New Rock, New Role is a road trip story through a role-play fantasy game (RPG). Daxx, not his real name, gets dropped into a fantasy world similar to the ones he’s used to playing, but with some subtle differences. The magic he’s used to doesn’t exist as he understands it in this world; dragons are small creatures, not massive winged fire-breathing menaces, and the different types of races are different to what he’s used to, giving plenty of early story amusing misunderstandings for Daxx to navigate.

It’s a fairly light-hearted story that moves along at a decent pace. There isn’t much reflection about the real world the characters have left behind; no one worries about what their bosses will say when they don’t turn up to work on Monday or if their house plants will survive. I would have enjoyed a little of this reflection, but not everyone will mind its absence; after all, not everyone wants their stories too seriously.

As a gamer, I can appreciate the details that make this story stand out. For example, the side characters are pretty memorable, even if there are a lot of them, and every conversation or action of consequence relates to the overarching story. And I enjoyed Daxx’s reflections throughout about how well he knew his gamer friends as he only knew them by their tags, not their real names and had no details about them. But it did feel very long, and after a while, it felt more like reading about people who had fallen into a fairy tale rather than a game. Certain things were skipped over, like their magic or combat training.

While there were lots of positives about New Rock and New Role, I didn’t connect with it as I wanted to. I wanted a little more depth than I got, and the author uses info dumps to fill the reader in on what happened to the characters while they were ‘off-screen’. This style kept me from fully investing in what was happening. However, taking that aside, if you are after a light buddy road trip read with banter, then this is the one for you, as there are lots of cool points to recommend it. It also has the added bonus of not being too gamer-elite so you’ll enjoy it whether you’re into video games or not.