While not as gripping and compelling as Little Brother, For the Win still fulfills its mission of educating readers (especially young adults) about economics and labor. I must confess I was worried going in about how Left-oriented Doctorow's treatment would be, given that he was rereading Marx recently. To his credit, Doctorow keeps a pretty even hand here. And while the economics lessons can interrupt the narrative flow, they're not preachy or eye-glazingly dull.

I'm on the fence about giving this 3 or 4 stars. I've just finished it and am a little disappointed in the climax and denouement, but I'm not sure why. If the book keeps popping up in my thoughts over time, I'll probably raise my rating. ( )

Generally as interesting as anything Doctorow's written, I had a hard time sticking it out. Possibly, I'm just too old to be really concerned about the plight of young gold farmers, but once Ashok showed up and started proselytizing, I was done. ( )

Perhaps if I was a gamer I would have found this book more interesting but I just can't get over my feeling that sitting playing video games for hours on end is a huge waste of time. Doctorow takes a divergent group of young people from mostly south-east Asia and posits that through playing computer games they can effect changes in society. Sorry, I just don't buy it. ( )

Ambitious and entertaining, this sprawling story is set in a near future where massive, networked, multi-player games have become nation-sized economies. Doctorow speculates on what that future may look like, and hones in on the people who try to make a living there - as opposed to simply playing for entertainment - and what might happen if they tried to organise into unions. The story - like the games - is globe-spanning (and the locales felt very convincing), with a vast array of characters.

This book could have been amazing if it had been firing on all cylindars, but unfortunately most of them seemed to misfire. The ecnomics stuff was interesting, but wasn't explained quite well enough; the story was a bit too convoluted and started to feel repetitive; the characters weren't quite well-defined enough; the book a bit too long; and the ending didn't deliver like I'd hoped it would.

So enjoyable, original and ambitious - and that's not bad. ( )

Great book which has been thoroughly reviewed elsewhere. An interesting optimistic peek into the gamer landscape and a series of commentary about economies small and large that ring very true for me. ( )