5 out of 5 stars

This one’s a reread for me, because I wanted to refresh my memory of it before the sequel comes out. Alas, Erebos 2 is only out in the original German right now, and I fear that an English translation isn’t even planned yet. Last time it took 2 years for an English translation to come out, so it might be a while this time, too. :(

But this is one of my favorite books, honestly. I’m a sucker for anything involving gaming, and the plot of this book is really unique. It’s about a video game that starts spreading around at this high school in London, but everything about the game is cloaked in secrecy and intrigue. It’s not a game anyone has every heard of, and no one at school will talk about it out in the open, so our protagonist, Nick, doesn’t even know what’s going on until he finally gets his hands on a copy from a classmate. The tagline on the cover is, “It’s a game. It watches you,” because the game knows your name, what you like, your secrets, etc. And at a certain point, the game starts giving you weird tasks to do in the “real world,” and things start to get really eerie from there.

Gah, it’s such a good book! One of those books that lives up to my original opinion of it on the reread. I don’t love the protagonist, Nick, very much, but the side characters were great, and I think Nick serves his purpose as our vessel into the story. You don’t have to love a protagonist to love a book, and plus, dude gets addicted to the game, and addiction brings out the worst in people. I can forgive him his faults.

But yes, highly, highly recommend this book. I can’t wait for the sequel! Maybe I should just learn German in the meantime…

(Cross-posted to Youth Book Review)