I just finished reading The Second Life Herald: The Virtual Tabloid That Witnessed the Dawn of the Metaverse. It reads like two short books, one pretty good and one almost very good, that were stitched together but not integrated as well as they might have been.

The first book is about The Sims Online, and is distanced and condescending toward the people there, constantly using the term "virtual" and putting much description of the world into "irony quotes."  The second, on Second Life, is sharp, impassioned and engaged. This might have been intentional: there's a lot of front matter to bring an unfamiliar reader up to speed, and the first hundred pages of "nudge nudge wink wink" might have been a misguided attempt to bring that unfamiliar reader along. 

Literary criticism aside, though, Ludlow and Wallace raise some important issues for anyone concerned with community formation and maintenance in synthetic worlds. I don't agree with their tastes at all, do agree with most of their conclusions, and think that the issues they raise need to be addressed both at the resident level and at the corporate management level for synthetic worlds to work, let alone live up to their potential.