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YOU: A Fiction
A bizarre second-person narrative about identity, the nature of fiction, industrial refrigeration, divorce, sex, love, and the permeability between public and personal responsibility. It's related to UNKNOWN ARMIES.
- GenresFantasy
236 pages, Paperback
4 people are currently reading
33 people want to read
About the author
Greg Stolze
146 books57 followersGreg Stolze (born 1970) is an American novelist and writer, whose work has mainly focused on properties derived from role-playing games.
Stolze has contributed to numerous role-playing game books for White Wolf Game Studio and Atlas Games, including Demon: the Fallen. Some of Stolze's recent work has been self-published using the "ransom method", whereby the game is only released when enough potential buyers have contributed enough money to reach a threshold set by the author.
Together with John Tynes he created and wrote the role-playing game Unknown Armies, published by Atlas Games. He has also co-written the free game NEMESIS, which uses the One-Roll Engine presented in Godlike and the so called Madness Meter derived from Unknown Armies.
Stolze has contributed to numerous role-playing game books for White Wolf Game Studio and Atlas Games, including Demon: the Fallen. Some of Stolze's recent work has been self-published using the "ransom method", whereby the game is only released when enough potential buyers have contributed enough money to reach a threshold set by the author.
Together with John Tynes he created and wrote the role-playing game Unknown Armies, published by Atlas Games. He has also co-written the free game NEMESIS, which uses the One-Roll Engine presented in Godlike and the so called Madness Meter derived from Unknown Armies.
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 10 reviews
July 9, 2025
"This book hates you."
That's a really, really good opening line. Cuts right to the point. Slaps you in the face. How often does a book directly address you, the reader, like that? Almost never. Even rarer for the book to come at you so aggressively. It wakes you up and makes you susceptible to what the book is trying to do. It's written in the second person after all. You are the central character who is, still, also not you. This concussive blow is to help you get into character.
Greg Stolze is the mad artist behind the tabletop roleplaying game Unknown Armies and You is a piece fiction in the Unknown Armies setting. Unknown Armies is set in our world, the real world. Well, with a few differences. Magic is real but it's spelled with a k. Magic works based on your attunement to certain human ideals. You know that car guy in your life. The guy who is obsessed with engines and keeps his 40 year old car humming along better than your modern fuel-efficient import? Maybe he is, knowingly or not, drawing on some inherent magic in the human obsession with automobiles. Other people draw power from being a certain kind of person. These archetypes have flowed through human stories since time immemorial. Maybe you're the fool. That person who always seems to be making terrible decisions but who always comes out out on top. Perhaps you're the rebel, pursuing the ultimate freedom, and pushing against useless societal boundaries. If you follow the archetype enough you can even take your place as part of a godlike posthuman collective called The Invisible Clergy.
Both of these paths require strict adherence to codes of conduct. Breaking taboo will squander any magic you've accrued. But you'll rearrange your whole life around these paths to get a hit of that sweet magic. Unknown Armies portrays magic as being as addictive as heroin. You have to get that next hit and you'll sacrifice any hope of a normal life to get it.
So anyway: You're Leo Evans. An avatar of the Necessary Servant. You're in advanced middle age and recently divorced. And you just finished reading a book that can change fundamental parts of your personality. The book is called Beasts of Pleasure and it is actually a room of the House of Renunciation. Being drawn into a room of the House of Renunciation is to have some core aspect of your being reversed. That's what it does and Leo has just had the love of his life turned in to his most bitter hatred. But also, the closing of the back cover is where we, the reader, enter Leo's mind. The House of Renunciation has also made us a backseat driver to Leo's misadventures.
I avidly read Choose Your Own Adventure books as a child. I loved how they put me into the role of main character and my choices mattered. One wrong turn and I could wind up with a game over. Luckily, nothing stops you from backing up and trying again. This book is not that. Leo is You but he also isn't. He has his own agency and if you get a sense of what's going on before Leo does you can't stop him. At least he knows a guy who can trade his physical wounds for another guy's emotional ones.
Unknown Armies is inveterately weird and You is no exception. I think my favorite aspect is the ambiguity. There is a large degree to which answers are not given. The characters in this book are almost all magick users or the products of magick. Which is to say, they are not healthy, well-adjusted people. the closest thing the book has to a direct antagonist claims to have a plan that would elevate Leo to the Invisible Clergy. But it involves their sacrifice. The question the book never asks but that I found incredibly interesting was: Would not enacting a plan to sacrifice one's life to elevate another to the ultimate path of the Necessary Servant, even to change the nature of the archetype, ultimately make one a *better* Necessary Servant than the person you claim to be trying to boost? It's a maze of weird thinking to go down and the book certainly does not close the door on the possibility that the antagonist is trying to elevate themselves to the Clergy themselves this way.
Unknown Armies runs on complicated cosmic-level conspiracies. This brilliantly brings you in to conspiracy thinking and by not putting it explicitly in the text makes me believe that was what was happening all the more. Not drawing my attention to it has drawn my attention to it! I can't let it go! You get in to the paranoid tunnels of thinking of a raving conspiracy theorist and I think this is the closest to magickal thinking that a rational human in a world without magick is likely to get it. It's rather brilliantly executed.
If there was a failing in the book it might that be that I never really felt like I *was* Leo. Some, even most, of that might be on me. Leo's life does not closely match mine and I may just not have the lived experience to identify with Leo. And I think Stolze likely knew that would happen. Leo is a financially successful executive for a freezer company. Leo can use magick to blend in with his environment. I have to assume that the alienation inherent in this was intentional. Leo is not a blank slate. The book could have been vague about who You are and Stolze deliberately chose not to be. You are not filling in the blanks of Leo's personality. Leo is who he is and you're along for the ride.
Did I like this book? Absolutely. It's a weird avant-garde piece of fiction and I'll be thinking about it for awhile yet. It is accessible to people not firmly immersed in the fiction of the Unknown Armies game and it will give you a lot to consider.
That's a really, really good opening line. Cuts right to the point. Slaps you in the face. How often does a book directly address you, the reader, like that? Almost never. Even rarer for the book to come at you so aggressively. It wakes you up and makes you susceptible to what the book is trying to do. It's written in the second person after all. You are the central character who is, still, also not you. This concussive blow is to help you get into character.
Greg Stolze is the mad artist behind the tabletop roleplaying game Unknown Armies and You is a piece fiction in the Unknown Armies setting. Unknown Armies is set in our world, the real world. Well, with a few differences. Magic is real but it's spelled with a k. Magic works based on your attunement to certain human ideals. You know that car guy in your life. The guy who is obsessed with engines and keeps his 40 year old car humming along better than your modern fuel-efficient import? Maybe he is, knowingly or not, drawing on some inherent magic in the human obsession with automobiles. Other people draw power from being a certain kind of person. These archetypes have flowed through human stories since time immemorial. Maybe you're the fool. That person who always seems to be making terrible decisions but who always comes out out on top. Perhaps you're the rebel, pursuing the ultimate freedom, and pushing against useless societal boundaries. If you follow the archetype enough you can even take your place as part of a godlike posthuman collective called The Invisible Clergy.
Both of these paths require strict adherence to codes of conduct. Breaking taboo will squander any magic you've accrued. But you'll rearrange your whole life around these paths to get a hit of that sweet magic. Unknown Armies portrays magic as being as addictive as heroin. You have to get that next hit and you'll sacrifice any hope of a normal life to get it.
So anyway: You're Leo Evans. An avatar of the Necessary Servant. You're in advanced middle age and recently divorced. And you just finished reading a book that can change fundamental parts of your personality. The book is called Beasts of Pleasure and it is actually a room of the House of Renunciation. Being drawn into a room of the House of Renunciation is to have some core aspect of your being reversed. That's what it does and Leo has just had the love of his life turned in to his most bitter hatred. But also, the closing of the back cover is where we, the reader, enter Leo's mind. The House of Renunciation has also made us a backseat driver to Leo's misadventures.
I avidly read Choose Your Own Adventure books as a child. I loved how they put me into the role of main character and my choices mattered. One wrong turn and I could wind up with a game over. Luckily, nothing stops you from backing up and trying again. This book is not that. Leo is You but he also isn't. He has his own agency and if you get a sense of what's going on before Leo does you can't stop him. At least he knows a guy who can trade his physical wounds for another guy's emotional ones.
Unknown Armies is inveterately weird and You is no exception. I think my favorite aspect is the ambiguity. There is a large degree to which answers are not given. The characters in this book are almost all magick users or the products of magick. Which is to say, they are not healthy, well-adjusted people. the closest thing the book has to a direct antagonist claims to have a plan that would elevate Leo to the Invisible Clergy. But it involves their sacrifice. The question the book never asks but that I found incredibly interesting was: Would not enacting a plan to sacrifice one's life to elevate another to the ultimate path of the Necessary Servant, even to change the nature of the archetype, ultimately make one a *better* Necessary Servant than the person you claim to be trying to boost? It's a maze of weird thinking to go down and the book certainly does not close the door on the possibility that the antagonist is trying to elevate themselves to the Clergy themselves this way.
Unknown Armies runs on complicated cosmic-level conspiracies. This brilliantly brings you in to conspiracy thinking and by not putting it explicitly in the text makes me believe that was what was happening all the more. Not drawing my attention to it has drawn my attention to it! I can't let it go! You get in to the paranoid tunnels of thinking of a raving conspiracy theorist and I think this is the closest to magickal thinking that a rational human in a world without magick is likely to get it. It's rather brilliantly executed.
If there was a failing in the book it might that be that I never really felt like I *was* Leo. Some, even most, of that might be on me. Leo's life does not closely match mine and I may just not have the lived experience to identify with Leo. And I think Stolze likely knew that would happen. Leo is a financially successful executive for a freezer company. Leo can use magick to blend in with his environment. I have to assume that the alienation inherent in this was intentional. Leo is not a blank slate. The book could have been vague about who You are and Stolze deliberately chose not to be. You are not filling in the blanks of Leo's personality. Leo is who he is and you're along for the ride.
Did I like this book? Absolutely. It's a weird avant-garde piece of fiction and I'll be thinking about it for awhile yet. It is accessible to people not firmly immersed in the fiction of the Unknown Armies game and it will give you a lot to consider.
November 24, 2024
Brilliant book. Laugh-out-loud funny, vibrant characters, a self-consistent supernatural tint on the otherwise very naturalistic world, and a really chewy mystery.
Thankfully, there is no villainous mastermind plotting to destroy the world "just because." Instead, we get highly original conundrums of love, hate and magic. What do YOU do when someone whom you suspect of ruining your life has a serious gunshot wound, and is probably going to die because he insists on stitching himself up instead of going to a hospital? Do you say "good riddance"? Do you call him an ambulance? How do you handle the overwhelming desire to murder a person whom you remember loving, and does it matter that one of these emotions is probably magically induced?
Highly recommended.
Thankfully, there is no villainous mastermind plotting to destroy the world "just because." Instead, we get highly original conundrums of love, hate and magic. What do YOU do when someone whom you suspect of ruining your life has a serious gunshot wound, and is probably going to die because he insists on stitching himself up instead of going to a hospital? Do you say "good riddance"? Do you call him an ambulance? How do you handle the overwhelming desire to murder a person whom you remember loving, and does it matter that one of these emotions is probably magically induced?
Highly recommended.
February 13, 2022
A very good idea with one of the most interesting premises I've seen for a book of this type. Unfortunately, Greg Stolze does not quite have the writing chops to pull this book together. In terms of feel, the book reminds me a lot of Chesterton's The Man Who Was Thursday: A Nightmare. Unlike that book, this book never clicks properly, instead always teasing metaphysical elements only to either have them resolved anti-climatically or simply left hanging in an unsatisfying way.
Add to that, the style of writing is very banal and uninteresting, which is in stark contrast with the very surreal/psychedelic premise. Its over-reliance on "clever" dialogue, egregious fight scenes and liberal virtue signaling* make the book a page turner, but leads to a book that has relatively little substance once you take these things away.
Ultimately the main problem is that Greg Stolze is really not a fiction writer. He is an RPG book writer who wrote a fiction book in order to inspire a prospective DM's campaign. It's just such a waste, though. A more schizo, more philosophically minded writer could really make this book shine. (Does Thomas777 take commissions?)
* Was it necessary that the MC spend 3 pages talking about how he's changed his mind about Gay Marriage, Greg?
Add to that, the style of writing is very banal and uninteresting, which is in stark contrast with the very surreal/psychedelic premise. Its over-reliance on "clever" dialogue, egregious fight scenes and liberal virtue signaling* make the book a page turner, but leads to a book that has relatively little substance once you take these things away.
Ultimately the main problem is that Greg Stolze is really not a fiction writer. He is an RPG book writer who wrote a fiction book in order to inspire a prospective DM's campaign. It's just such a waste, though. A more schizo, more philosophically minded writer could really make this book shine. (Does Thomas777 take commissions?)
* Was it necessary that the MC spend 3 pages talking about how he's changed his mind about Gay Marriage, Greg?
June 7, 2017
You pulls no punches. It starts out with a brutally honest statement "This book hates You." The "You" in question is Leo Evans, a man surrounded by a cast of very broken, half-crazy people. Bev, his ex-wife. In the first chapter, he gets mugged, not for his wallet, but for a book. This may be the best thing that happens to You in the first 90% of the novel.
Then it gets weirder. On the whole, Stolze channels a wonderful mix of Tim Powers, with just a touch of Harry Harrison, and breaks the fourth wall in the manner of some of the best of Kurt Vonnegut. It's funny, entertaining, and well worth a read.
Then it gets weirder. On the whole, Stolze channels a wonderful mix of Tim Powers, with just a touch of Harry Harrison, and breaks the fourth wall in the manner of some of the best of Kurt Vonnegut. It's funny, entertaining, and well worth a read.
January 31, 2019
So I like reading RPG texts for games I may or may not ever play. And the book for Unknown Armies (2nd ed) is THE best text of its type. It really did rewire my brain and make me see the world differently. But I think the format is actually its strength; bits of rumor and innuendo go a long way, and fertilize the imagination. A lot of people walk away from that book asking “OK, that’s neat, but what do you DO?”
Ans I guess this book answers that, but the answer is basically “not much.”
Ans I guess this book answers that, but the answer is basically “not much.”
March 2, 2021
Written in the second person, YOU is about an ordinary person in an extraordinary world. Stolze excels at the kind of dreary daily dread featured in this work, the work-a-day grinding that numbs the self and leaves one unsure who they are.
October 2, 2017
This book hates you. It says so on the first page.
It promises to be nasty, and delivers in full force.
It promises to be nasty, and delivers in full force.
March 16, 2017
enjoyably humourous
August 6, 2024
'YOU' primarily concerns the tribulations that befall Leo Evans, a middle-aged, unhappily divorced cultist with a degree of cosmic insight and some resultant magick power. Many of the other major players in this story are similarly powered and include but are not limited to: Bev, Leo's ex-wife and Godwalker of the Necessary Servant; fuckin' Rico, an Avatar of the Masterless Man; and .
Unlike 'Godwalker', Stolze's previous Unknown Armies novel, 'YOU' isn't a gut punch delivered with white-knuckled intensity. It's a more stumbling, simmering affair but it's no less compelling for it. In fact it's more relatable and - as much as a story like this can be - more realistic.
'YOU' is good. It's very good. But I like 'Godwalker' more. You should absolutely read them both.
Unlike 'Godwalker', Stolze's previous Unknown Armies novel, 'YOU' isn't a gut punch delivered with white-knuckled intensity. It's a more stumbling, simmering affair but it's no less compelling for it. In fact it's more relatable and - as much as a story like this can be - more realistic.
'YOU' is good. It's very good. But I like 'Godwalker' more. You should absolutely read them both.
Displaying 1 - 9 of 10 reviews