- Paperback: 416 pages
- Publisher: Orbit; 1 Original edition (Feb 13 2012)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0316133396
- ISBN-13: 978-0316133395
- Product Dimensions: 14 x 3.2 x 21 cm
- Shipping Weight: 363 g
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #119,831 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Details |
Product Description
Review
"The blending of myster-thriller, SF,
and traditional Hollywood-story elements is hugely successful. Surely the best of the Dagmar Shaw series and one of the author's finest novels." (Booklist )
"There are powerful ideas stirring beneath the skin of what to a first approximation resembles a taut technothriller, and it's brilliantly executed." --- Charles Stross on Deep State
"The characters are realistic and absorbing, and the story deeply compelling." --- Publishers Weekly (Starred Review) on This Is Not a Game
"This Is Not a Game succeeds not only as a suspense novel, but as an incisive portrait of a subculture for whom reality is increasingly contingent, and increasingly mediated." --- Locus
"Williams asks some tough questions about the boundary between games and reality, and shows how in the end, the only thing we can be sure is real is the communities we create, and the games we play together." --- io9.com on This Is Not a Game
"Great shut-out-the-world escapism & a decent crime story in 1 book!" (thebookbag.co.uk onThe Fourth Wall )
and traditional Hollywood-story elements is hugely successful. Surely the best of the Dagmar Shaw series and one of the author's finest novels." (Booklist )
"There are powerful ideas stirring beneath the skin of what to a first approximation resembles a taut technothriller, and it's brilliantly executed." --- Charles Stross on Deep State
"The characters are realistic and absorbing, and the story deeply compelling." --- Publishers Weekly (Starred Review) on This Is Not a Game
"This Is Not a Game succeeds not only as a suspense novel, but as an incisive portrait of a subculture for whom reality is increasingly contingent, and increasingly mediated." --- Locus
"Williams asks some tough questions about the boundary between games and reality, and shows how in the end, the only thing we can be sure is real is the communities we create, and the games we play together." --- io9.com on This Is Not a Game
"Great shut-out-the-world escapism & a decent crime story in 1 book!" (thebookbag.co.uk onThe Fourth Wall )
Product Description
Dagmar Shaw got out of the game... and into the movies.
Sean is a washed-up child actor reduced to the lowest dregs of reality television to keep himself afloat. His life was a downward spiral of alcoholism, regret, and failure... until he met Dagmar.
Except Sean has secrets, dark even for the Hollywood treadmill of abuse, addiction, and rehab. And Dagmar is a cipher. There are dark rumors about her past, the places she's been, the things she was involved in. People tend to die around her and now, she wants Sean for something. A movie, she says, but with her history, who's to say what her real game is? (2012)
Sean is a washed-up child actor reduced to the lowest dregs of reality television to keep himself afloat. His life was a downward spiral of alcoholism, regret, and failure... until he met Dagmar.
Except Sean has secrets, dark even for the Hollywood treadmill of abuse, addiction, and rehab. And Dagmar is a cipher. There are dark rumors about her past, the places she's been, the things she was involved in. People tend to die around her and now, she wants Sean for something. A movie, she says, but with her history, who's to say what her real game is? (2012)
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
4.4 out of 5 stars (8 customer reviews)
5 of 6 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars
Great Book, Lousy Ending, Feb 20 2012
By Daniel S. Palter "Scott Palter" - Published on Amazon.com
Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: The Fourth Wall (Paperback)
This is less the third book in the This is not a Game/Dagmar series than a third book in that universe. It is a near future seen from the POV of the gaming [and in this case movie/celebrity] industry/s. The characters are excellent. The action is wonderful. The man clearly knows the industries and types he is skewering. I thoroughly enjoyed it...until the end which was the sort of let down one frequently gets in middle volumes in series [which AFAIK this isn't]. If you ever read Heinlein's Glory Road you will understand the feeling. Enough loose ends are tied together but in the most obvious of ways and then it just sort of ends. If that disturbs you this is a pass which is sad because 90% of the way through it was a hell of a ride, enough so that someday I may reread it. Would not have even taken much more length to make the ending more fun...IMO. YMMV. (
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
A 21st Century Dickens, Mar 10 2012
By Kennedy Gammage - Published on Amazon.com
Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: The Fourth Wall (Paperback)
Or maybe a combination of Anthony Trollope and Roger Zelazny, Walter Jon Williams continues to riff on `the way we live now' in his latest near-future thrillers about new media developer Dagmar Shaw, starting with This is Not a Game, and then Deep State, which predicted the Twitter Revolution months before Arab Spring. Now in The Fourth Wall, Williams switches it up with a new narrator: ex-child star Sean Makin, who we meet slumming on a martial arts reality TV show called Celebrity Pitfighter, and then becomes a bona fide worldwide celebrity, acting lead in Dagmar's surprise hit Web 2.0 pay-per-view serial (think HBO for hand-helds) - when suddenly Makin's friends and co-workers start getting killed. The Fourth Wall is fast-paced, paranoid and occasionally laugh-out-loud funny. Hopefully there's a sequel in the works.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Best of the Dagmar., Feb 15 2012
By Stephen Marino "AKA Ralf the Dog." - Published on Amazon.com
Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
For those who have read the other two Dagmar books (This Is Not a Game and Deep State), the first thing that might surprise you is that Dagmar plays a very small part. By the end of the second book, she has gone from a person who worries about getting stuck in a riot to a person who can walk into a country and start a revolution. There is little room for character growth. (She is also a bit preoccupied with popping out a kid.)The protagonist of the Forth Wall is a former child star who is doing an almost passable job at returning his career from the land of third world syndication. Parts of the book are about him dealing with his drinking and substance issues (This is not done in a heavy handed way). Some of the book is about him dealing with the way his parents exploited him as a kid. Most of the book covers people around him being murdered and his attempting to make sure he is not next.
Perhaps, what I like best about this book (and the writing of the author) is that he does not hand you the big ideas. The words, "Fourth Wall" do not appear anywhere between the covers. The author assumes you know what the forth wall is. If you do not, he assumes you will look it up. When thinking about the title, after reading the book, it puts the story in a different perspective. (Thank you for not assuming your readers are a bunch of morons.)
I do not wish to give too much of the book away. I will say, it is very funny in places, with some of the best developed characters Williams has created to date. This book gets five of five.
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