Otherworld

September 1, 2017

Gr 8 Up-Simon is just your average delinquent teenager with a heart of gold until he returns to his New Jersey home after getting kicked out of boarding school, only to realize that his best friend and crush is avoiding him. Kat is hiding something and it looks like she's in real danger. Meanwhile, Simon gets a glimpse at the new VR game, Otherworld, and hopes to meet up with Kat there to figure out what's going on. There is an accident, and the two realize they are in much more trouble than they thought. People around the area are all mysteriously getting wounded and falling into comas, Otherworld doesn't want to let players out anymore-the code is going rogue, and the stakes might not just be a game reboot. The quick pick for conspiracy theory fans gives teens just enough setting for their imaginations to run wild while keeping the pacing quick for reluctant readers. There is just enough character building for an average action novel to keep readers plugged into the drama and enough dangling digital ethics threads to keep gamer geeks interested. Fans of M.T. Anderson's Feed, James Dashner's The Eye of Minds, Cory Doctorow's Little Brother, and Mary E. Pearson's The Adoration of Jenna Fox won't want to leave Otherworld either. VERDICT Purchase where fast-paced sci-fi thrillers are popular.-Rachel Reinwald, Lake Villa District Library, IL

Copyright 2017 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

September 1, 2017
A delinquent teen searches a virtual world for his best friend. Simon and Kat have been best friends since they were preteens, but following a series of peculiar events the two white teens have not spoken for several months. After a disastrous accident leaves Kat unresponsive in a hospital bed, the famous Company behind virtual-reality tech such as the Otherworld offers to plug Kat into a new world using experimental, state-of-the-art technology. When Simon discovers that the Company's plans are less than virtuous he smuggles himself into the virtual world in search of Kat. The authors sketch a believable, not-too-distant future, envisioning the evolution of virtual reality as a truly seductive life choice. The Otherworld itself is fairly standard fantasy stuff, with knights, dragons, witches, wizards, and cities. Simon journeys through this dangerous land and struggles against a chosen-one narrative thrust upon him by the game's indigenous inhabitants and players alike. This thread blends with the Company's corporate-intrigue plot points deliciously, but the book's place as series opener lessens the development in some frustrating ways. Equally maddening is Kat's damsel-in-distress status; she is less a character and more a goal until the novel's very end. An exciting start to a mostly well-conceived sci-fi series that has room for improvement. (Science fiction. 12-17)

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September 18, 2017
Simon and Kat used to be best friends, but lately she has pulled away from him and taken to hanging with a bad crowd. Then an accident leaves Kat in an unresponsive state. The only way for the two of them to connect now is through a new virtual reality game known as Otherworld. When Simon plunges into Otherworld in search of Kat, he discovers bizarre realms dedicated to giving players exactly what they want—even if it kills them—and nonplayer characters that have taken on lives of their own. Back in the real world, he investigates a conspiracy involving Otherworld’s creators and their exploitation of victims like Kat. This fast-paced adventure straddles two worlds as it plays with familiar SF elements that include emergent AIs, virtual reality games, and evil corporations. Though the result is entertaining, Segal and Miller (the Nightmares! series) don’t bring much new to the genre; the real strength of the story is in its supporting characters, such as possibly asexual Busara Ogubu, a fellow student with secrets of her own. Ages 12–up.

September 15, 2017
Grades 9-12 An accident at a party in an abandoned industrial site sends Simon's best friend (and love interest) Kat to the hospital, where she's diagnosed with locked-in syndrome, a condition that leaves her mind intact but her body paralyzedand there are three other high-school students with the same diagnosis. Already suspicious, Simon teams up with Busara (whose father envisioned medical uses for virtual reality), and they uncover what looks like a conspiracy connected to an Oculus-Rift-type virtual reality gaming world known as Otherworld. It seems the company is using badly injured people as beta testers for a commercial product, and when they can't find them, they create them. Can Simon get in and get himself, Kat, and a few new friends out before their virtual death means death IRL? VR lovers and other gaming types will be in heaven reading this book, which is an imaginative and entertaining game walk-through combined with mystery and danger. Try this with reluctant readers and use it with fans of James Dashner's Mortality Doctrine series or Emma Trevayne's Gamescape: Overworld (2016). HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: The best-selling duo behind the Nightmares! series will be touring in the wake of heavy publisher promotion, so grab spare copies while you can.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.)