Battle of the Linguist Mages

Maybe you can help me stop sparklegeddon!

In modern-day Los Angeles, a shadowy faction led by the governor of California develops the arcane art of combat linguistics, planting the seeds of a future totalitarian empire.

Isobel is the queen of the medieval rave-themed VR game Sparkle Dungeon. Her prowess in the game makes her an ideal candidate to learn the secrets of power morphemes--unnaturally dense units of meaning that warp perception when skillfully pronounced.

But Isobel's reputation makes her the target of a strange resistance movement led by spellcasting anarchists, who may be the only thing stopping a cabal from toppling California over the edge of a terrible transformation, with forty million lives at stake.

Time is short for Isobel to level up and choose a side--because that cabal has attracted much bigger and weirder enemies than the anarchist resistance, emerging from dark and vicious dimensions of reality and heading straight for planet Earth!