Tony Hickey's review of Epic in Village magazine

Tony Hickey is a book reviewer for the Irish weekly current affairs magazine Village. He wrote this nice review of Epic in January 2005:

The epic of the title is a computer conflict game that, in the world where the story is set, has become an instrument of oppression under the rule of the Committee of Central Allocation. Erik, whose parents have become victims of the system, sets out to alter the situation by taking on the computer character of Cindella, a girl thief and a swashbuckler. The resulting narrative is a triumph of control, focus and a truly dazzling writing style that takes us through a world of avatars and ogres, orcs and dwarves, of human concerns and human feelings; a narrative that itself justly deserves the word 'epic'. It succeeds on so many levels without ever resorting to the asininities of allegory but cannot fail to present resemblances to the nascent imperialism of our own world. Yet the book remains first and foremost an attention-grabbing, action tale in the new genre that might be called 'cyber-fiction'. How about this description of Erik’s encounter with the vampire count: “Erik saw thousands of years of bloody existence. Exquisite beauty twisted to serve fouled hunger. Ennui without comprehension, lifted only by the prospect of chasing prey whose corruption and befoulment were sufficiently challenging to offer diversion”