Doctorow offers this description of the book:
In the virtual future, you must organize to survive.
At any hour of the day or night, millions of people around the globe are engrossed in multiplayer online games, questing and battling to win virtual gold, jewels, and precious artifacts. Meanwhile, others seek to exploit this vast shadow economy, running electronic sweatshops in the world’s poorest countries, where countless gold farmers,bound to their work by abusive contracts and physical threats, harvest virtual treasure for their employers to sell to First World gamers who are willing to spend real money to skip straight to higher-level gameplay.
Mala is a brilliant 15-year-old from rural India whose leadership skills in virtual combat have earned her the title of General Robotwalla. In Shenzen, heart of China’s industrial boom, Matthew is defying his former bosses to build his own successful gold-farming team. Leonard, who calls himself Wei-Dong, lives in Southern California, but spends his nights fighting virtual battles alongside his buddies in Asia, a world away. All of these young people, and more, will become entangled with the mysterious young woman called Big Sister Nor, who will use her experience, her knowledge of history, and her connections with real-world organizers to build them into a movement that can challenge the status quo.
The ruthless forces arrayed against them are willing to use any means to protect their power—including blackmail, extortion, infiltration, violence, and even murder. To survive, Big Sister’s people must out-think the system. This will lead them to devise a plan to crash the economy of every virtual world at once—a Ponzi scheme combined with a brilliant hack that ends up being the biggest, funnest game of all.
Readers aged 19 or younger who are interested in a free early look at the book to review it should e-mail torpublicity at tor dot com with “FTW” for the subject-line, and include the name of the blog or paper where the review would appear. “For fun, also share a game you enjoyed recently and why.”
Doctorow notes “We did this with Little Brother a couple years back, on the grounds that books for young people should be available for young reviewers to write about, rather than adult reviewers who try to figure out whether young people will enjoy them. It was a real success and I’m happy to be repeating it.” The offer is open to US and Canadian would-be reviewers.