God is a Gamer – Bitcoin Thriller (Book Review)

God is a Gamer is a Bitcoin Thriller, written by Ravi Subramanian, the Banker-writer. This is the first book written by him I’ve happened to read and I liked it. Just one issue: The second climax in the end didn’t appeal to me or wasn’t realistic. Otherwise, this book was interesting.

Bitcoins, if you are wondering, is a virtual currency system which converts normal money into virtual currencies and helps pay anonymously for purchasing products/services online, where they accept Bitcoins. One can also store money as Bitcoins. As you can guess, it can be used for illegal money exchanges, and the story is wound around it.

A senior senator is killed in the US, there is a bank ATM robbery, there is a secret online network that sells dangerous items like drugs and accepts bitcoins as payment, there is a game vendor who wants to make it big on Facebook, there is computer virus/malware let loose. All these elements combine to give a good police-procedural/mystery and a Thriller.

The story is new and good. The book drew me in right from the first page and kept me turning pages. The pace of the book increased in the last hundred pages or so. The first climax (yes there are two, one after another) was totally unexpected and took me by surprise. The book could have ended with it – somehow I prefer the first climax.

But the author introduces a second climax where there is another twist. For twist’s sake, it’s good, but I thought this second climax made the plot quite complex. Maybe I should read it again to understand clearly, but it sort of took away the clear and simple writing/narration followed until then. It was difficult to understand the complete picture of the crime and close the gaps presented in the earlier scenes.

Also, I felt the antagonists could have been stronger and more powerful. How can people, who are technically sound, make simple mistakes like not covering their online activities, that gives away their identity to the cops?

At 300 pages, I appreciate the author/publisher for keeping it short enough to be completed over a weekend. Some books are unnecessarily long and I hate to stretch my reading beyond two days of the weekend.

They could have used a larger font-size for the text. I am used to reading in the Kindle where the font size is adjustable so I found the small text a little uncomfortable on the eyes.

I think I will read the other books of this author sometime in the future. This book made a good enough impression on me to try more. Even though he introduces a lot of new technical concepts, I wish he could also introduce us to a few new banking concepts and scenarios that we are unaware of, that maybe useful.

• You can buy this book from Flipkart or Amazon.in in India. (Disclaimer: These are affiliate links and I may get a small commission if you buy the product after clicking on these links. Your price will not increase.)

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