Ok, last blog on “For the Win,” I promise. I have finished the book now, and I have to say that I did not love the ending. Here is how I feel about Part III:
What I didn’t like: For such a wonderfully painted picture about how the underprivileged needed to work together to achieve a common goal, it seems like only the already powerful “won” in this book. The laborers in China lost their strike and ended up back in the work place, while the American Turks are going to get what they wanted. I know the book was centered around the game, but it certainly feels like the strikers who worked in gaming were going to come out ahead, while the others still had large fights to battle.
What I did like: The Ponzi scheme was awesome. It was fun to show macro economics in the works and how if too much cash is dumped into an economy, it can collapse. The stocks shorting/leveraging/etc. seems a little complicated for a youth novel, but it was explained fairly simply so that it could mostly be understood.
Overall, I still liked it, but wished more had been done or there was more closure for the laborers.