This book, sadly, doesn't really work. Here's why.
The main character is beset by a variety of confusing circumstances which he doesn't understand and which he is trying to investigate. So far so good. This is a mystery to be solved then? Well kinda. The thing is that mystery in fiction works in a particular way, and Mogworld comes across as written by someone who doesn't understand that.
If you look at some really well-written mystery fiction, such as Agatha Christie (or J.K. Rowling for that matter - let's not be snobby about it), you usually find yourself in a race against the main characters to discover the answer to a puzzle. What makes Christie such compulsive reading is that you know that you and Poirot have the same information to work on, and there's a hope that you might figure it out before he does. And of course Christie manages this information like a magician: every time she throws in the vital clues and then immediately distracts you from them so that you only half notice them, if you notice them at all. Then when Poirot gets there before you do, you're kicking yourself because you had the information, and you should have figured it out, but you didn't.*
Arthur Conan Doyle is a bit different in that there's no way you could possibly get there before Holmes, because he always has information that you don't. These stories are less about the mystery itself and more about the joys of shady characters, damsels in distress, and Holmes looking moody. Holmes tends to figure out the answer at warp speed, and then explains how he did it, involving a newspaper story from twenty years ago, a gang of information gathering street urchins, and the fact that he instantly recognised that waiter as Kentucky Jim, the infamous gangster. It's not pure mystery in the way that Christie is, but it's good in a different way.
In the case of poorly written mystery, the author often underestimates the reader's intelligence. This can lead to the reader figuring out who the murderer is halfway through the book and then waiting another agonising 200 pages for the characters to catch up. Ben Elton tends to do this with the murder mysteries he keeps writing. Not once has the murderer come as a surprise to me. Usually it's so obvious it's painful.
So now we come to Mogworld and why it doesn't work. Jim finds himself in a strange situation - a land in which nobody can die without quickly respawning; stuff gets deleted and everyone seems to be heading for the same quest. The issue of why nobody can stay dead could be an interesting mystery to solve. Except it's not, because the reader knows the answer from page one: this is a story set inside a computer game. So you're not going with Jim as he tries to figure it out. You've effectively solved the case and wandered off at the very beginning. What's more, if you wanted to set up a character it's virtually impossible to give a damn about, this is how to do it. Firstly, make a character who can't die or suffer any permanent damage: way to make dangerous situations lose any kind of interest and become tedious. Secondly, issue constant reminders (via the computer game cliches) that this character isn't real. There's a reason why novelists don't do this. Hell, there's a reason why people who write video games don't do this. None of the NPCs in WoW say things like, "you know, it's weird: Cairne Bloodhoof has been killed by the Alliance loads of times, and he always came back unharmed a few minutes later, but then one day he was deleted and remained dead."
There are some amusing moments, mostly around subverting cliches and drawing attention to the absurdity of some of the stuff that goes on in an MMO. Yes, on some levels, this stuff is quite funny. But here's the catch: it would fit into a stand up comedy routine, or a web comic, quite well. It doesn't work in a novel. Dara O'Briain does a great routine about Snake from Metal Gear Solid, and how his image as an elite agent doesn't fit with how badly Dara plays him. It's very funny. It would make a terrible novel. Novels are supposed to draw you in and make you forget that what you're reading is the product of someone else's imagination - not draw attention to it constantly.
This book reads, unfortunately, like a book which was written by someone who likes video games a lot more than they like novels; someone who doesn't understand how a novel works and what it's supposed to do. It's a shame. I really wanted to like it.
* Actually there is a knack in working out who the murderer is in Christie, and I'm very good at it. It has nothing to do with the information given, and everything to do with her writing style and the way she deflects attention from the real murderer - you get used to it. But that's kinda a given with someone who's written that many books.
