Saga

Kostick, Conor . Saga. New York: Viking, 2008. Available as an audiobook from Audible.com.[1] Book 2 of the Epic series ("The Avatar Chronicles Book 2), preceded by Epic[2] and followed by Edda.[3]

Young-adult SF, if violent for YA, significant for cyberpunk, VR, antigravity technology and its implications, and gaming. Plot summary from Google Books:

Ghost is part of an anarcho-punk airboard gang who live to break the rules. And there's a good reason - their world, Saga, has a strict class system enforced by high-tech electronics and a corrupt monarchy. Then Ghost and her gang learn the complicated truth. Saga isn't actually a place; it's a sentient computer game. The Dark Queen who rules Saga is trying to enslave the people of New Earth by making them Saga addicts. And she will succeed unless Ghost and her friends - and Erik, from Epic [another, more fundamental game world], and his friends - figure out how to stop her in time.[4]

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From Kirkus review (full form of which refers to "avatars" and "meta-humans"):

This exciting sequel’s concept explodes far beyond Epic, its 2007 predecessor. Epic (the game) is defunct, but a new game — Saga — has mysteriously appeared on New Earth’s computer system. [...] Immediately, vast numbers of players becocme addicted and fall sick. Meanwhile, a girl named Ghost and her anarcho-punk gang [... nonlethally buy destructively] protest unfair class rankings. [Ghost's ...] consciousness goes back only six years to age nine. Who was she before that? Kostick reveals early how Ghost’s world features airboarding and anti-gravity technology while Erik’s tech-regressive society drives donkey carts: Ghost’s world is Saga, the game that Erik’s people are currently playing. Thousands of years ago on Earth, Saga’s characters sprang into consciousness — Saga’s population is human. But two of its original Reprogrammed Autonomous Lifeforms remain, one a Dark Queen thirsting for immortality. [...].[5]

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Reviewed by Jennifer Moorman, SFRA Review #285 (Spring 2008): pp. 34-35.[6]

Moorman notes,

The overriding theme of this novel is a certain strain of Marxist — or, at the very least, stridently anticapitalist — sentiment, in conjunction with an advocacy for nonviolent [if destructive of property — RDE] rebellion. [...] Additionally, the idea of embodiment, particularly as it pertains to gender, is prominent and could enable productive discussion. As in Epic, Erik’s avatar is a powerful woman, though everyone seems more impressed with her beauty than with her remarkable physical and magical abilities: [...] (51). The Dark Queen is depicted as powerfully evil, but certain moments convey what could be called gendered condescension on behalf of the author: [...]. The book’s cyberpunk framework allows it to repeatedly address the issue of embodiment in a virtual world in interesting, if occasionally implausible or contradictory, ways. (p. 35)

RDE, finishing, 14Jan21