August Seebeck is a 20-something student from a world not quite the same as ours. In GODPLAYERS, August tumbled into a vastly larger universe, and learned that he wasn't, after all, an orphaned only child. He and his turbulent siblings, and the breathtaking Lune and others still stranger, are Players in the Contest of Worlds. They are mysteriously transformed humans whose ancient task is enigmatic battle with the dread, passionate K-Machines. Now crisis deepens.
Empowered with a potent killing device of his own, an eerie gift from legend, August finds himself flung from world to world in a brutal and baffling game, with entire universes at stake and very little idea of the rules. Only two things are his beloved Lune is not who she seems, and August's pivotal role is no chance accident. In this cosmos, survival of the gods themselves depends upon human victory over the K-Machines.
Damien Francis Broderick was an Australian science fiction and popular science writer and editor of some 74 books. The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction credits him with the first usage of the term "virtual reality" in science-fiction, in his 1982 novel The Judas Mandala.
Interesting ideas, wandering, shaky execution, and a dippy, unlikeable protagonist. Great opening, good teaser ending, some marvelous setpieces. I'd read the next.... but I don't think it ever appeared....
Hmm. In his review, Paul Di Filippo says K-Machines concludes a duology with Godplayers -- if so, Broderick is leaving a mop-head of loose ends... As with Godplayers, I wanted to like this book more than I could. Worth reading, I guess, but YMMV.