Crusader

Roberta Ritter has been waiting for a knight in shining armor for most of her humdrum life. She’s a doormat, a nobody whose mother died a few years back, a smart girl who wastes her afternoons working in a failing arcade in a failing shopping mall. And then a Crusader arrives. . . .

Only this Crusader is a virtual reality war game, one that does a booming business at the arcade, despite—or perhaps because of—the controversy over its racism and violence.

Roberta’s boring life explodes. Onetime...