Erebos - Ursula Poznanski

The book I am reviewing today is Erebos by Ursula Poznanski. I'm sorry if the link is a little odd. I recently joined the Amazon affiliate program (where I get a small cut if you buy something after clicking through from one of my posts), and I'm still getting the hang of it. While I usually do not give plot outlines of the books I review, this one is going to be an exception. Don't worry, there should not be any major spoilers, nothing more then you would find in the Amazon description. However, as usual, if you particularly hate spoilers, you should proceed with caution. 

This book is about a boy named Nick, who receives a copy of "Erebos," the video game that has been making the rounds at his school. He begins playing, and discovers a terrifying new world, governed by many strict rules. As time goes on, it becomes clear that the game is watching them. It begins manipulating their lives out side of the game, and eventually, things get dangerous.

Now, let's move on to the characters. I think the characters are the weak link here. Many of them were pretty one sided, with a few exceptions. While this is obviously not a great thing, I do not really count this as a big mark against the book.

Next, we are going to talk about the writing. I am not sure if it's really fair to say too much about this, since the copy I read was in English, not the original German. I know that a lot can be lost in translation, so I am not going to consider this part very strongly in my final rating. I would say that the writing was quite good, though it could have been better. What I am especially impressed by is the way she balances the two worlds of the game, and real life. Even without really being a gamer, I loved the parts in Erebos as much, or better, then I liked the real life sections. At some point about a third of the way through, I hardly noticed the difference between one and the other, which is terrific, because that was the same blurriness that Nick, the main character was beginning to experience.

Last is the plot. I LOVED IT. This is by far what is selling this book, as it rightly should. The story starts strong, and gets stronger. The ending is surprising, and satisfying. This book has action, and suspense, and a little romance (though this part was not very well developed, and did not make a lot of sense to me). It is scifi, fantasy (in that Erebos is a fantasy role playing game), and in the end, a bit of mainstream geek fiction. This book is something that I am sure all the gamers out there would love, but I did too. I am not a gamer, but I love scifi, nerdy stuff , and just the book in general. There is something that gets you creepily addicted to it, and when you get pulled away, you fell like you were just playing the game yourself and will lose a level if you don't get back in immediately!

The reason I did a little plot outline at the top of this post is to get you engaged. I really want people to read this book, and I am hoping that that will help. Read this book! It is fantastic! I don't think it has as much attention as it deserves, and I am doing what I can to resolve that.

Just so you know, when I rated this book on Shelfari, I gave it a full five stars. For reference, the only other books I have rated that highly are Paper Towns, East of Eden , and The Fault in Our Stars .