The Diva Review:
JPod is funny. In fact it's hilarious in parts. Anyone who lived through the ridiculous dot.com era will recognize it all. If you've never worked in IT, you might not think the office culture is as funny as those who do. Naturally, the comparisons to Microserfs, Coupland’s first "Silicon Valley" novel are unavoidable. But JPod, is a little further down the line and trying a little too hard to be post-modern.
If you like Coupland's wry, deadpan, pop-culture drenched style, this book is a good read. Ethan is a game developer who works in an environment run by people only interested in the bottom line. He spends his long, long days working on a game that is probably going to be ruined by stupid ideas out of the marketing department. He and his co-workers do exactly what developers do. They play pointless games and tricks on each other; engage in impossibly witty banter, surf the web for random stuff and try to decipher Pi. It's unclear if they actually like each other. The probably don't. Trust me, I know developers.
Being a Coupland novel, it's got all kinds of zaniness going on. Poor Ethan's life outside of work is filled with impossibly bizarre people and situations. And they're funny. He must deal with helping his pot growing mother who accidentally killed a biker, 20 Chinese immigrants illegally smuggled into the country and dumped in his apartment, a crazy romp in China and other completely random events.
Unfortunately, this book is chock full of annoying devices. The most annoying thing in this book, and possibly the most annoying thing in any book I've ever read, is Coupland inserting himself - as himself - into the book! Characters talk about him and reference his books, and it gets worse! Really! The other terribly annoying thing is that he fills page after page with Pi - but it translates into meaningless numbers taking up space. So, the book is significantly shorter than it seems. At at the price of books these days, that's not cool.
It's kind of like Microserfs lite. Definitely not one of Coupland's best, but not terrible.
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