Backwards Compatible reads like a cross between The Guild and Nick & Nora’s Infinite Playlist, though the comedy isn’t as sophisticated as the former (which, you know), nor the central relationship as affecting as the latter (which, also.) George and Katie meet cute at a midnight event for the sale of the newest version of a World of Warcraft-ish game. After a tousle over the last copy of the game is won by George, Katie guilts him into giving it to her because boobs and tears. The plot details a growing group of gamers, high school friends, losers and little sisters playing video games, hanging out at the mall, and learning a little something about friendship.
Both Katie and George are on winter break from college, back in their somewhat dire sounding small town, and the novel invokes that loose, awkward, timeless sense of the winter vacation like crazy. Though their college lives aren’t even detailed too closely (or at all), you can kind of see them in the negative of too much unstructured time and the growing disconnects with high school friends. No one has any money; rides must be scammed or jumped; younger siblings are suddenly giving out (extremely questionable) romantic advice. No one sleeps or showers. I’m maybe making this sound grim, but the grimness is really more in my recollection of those times, not in the novel itself. As usual, I need to lighten up.
As a comedy, Backwards Compatible relies on an incredible amount of trash talk and roughly eleventy million pop culture references. I found the trash talk tiresome, but then that’s an aspect of gamer culture that puts me off. And as far as the eleventy million references go, some worked, and some didn’t, which is per usual with that kind of humor. The geeking is so constant throughout that you’re bound to find something funny, and there’s a really great gag executed near the end involving George’s Christmas traditions. The sequence at the second Hobbit movie, which certainly wasn’t out when this was written, was alarmingly prescient. Don’t even get me started on those movies.
The only sour patch for me was the date Katie went on a date with a gamer asshole, which, in another kind of book, would have ended in a sexual assault. It was too triggery in a way that was supposed to be funny, and George’s reactions were kind of the worst. Again, not to be too dour, and you know, haha that pushy dudes don’t know that cosplay isn’t consent. I guess. But mostly this was fun and diverting, not really trying to do too much and succeeded at what it attempted. Katie and George are likable dorks, even if they read a little younger than I would expect from college juniors. (The big THERE’S NO SEX IN THIS BOOK warning I could do without in the marketing too, but then given the state of most New Adult titles – which often read like a gyno exam – maybe a little warning is in order.)
Oh, and big points for having George drive a Geo Metro named Crimson Lightning. Geo Metros are the best. Mine was named The Flying Pickle before it got cracked up in an extremely low impact accident many moons ago. RIP The Flying Pickle, and my lost youth.
Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC.