Part of Erebos
First published 2010
Nick goes to school in London and notices something passing between students in secret. A pirated game called Erebos, copied from hand to hand, and everyone who plays it stops talking about anything else. Nick gets his copy and understands why. The game is immersive in a way nothing else is. It also comes with rules that feel more like threats: one life only, no second chances after death, never play in front of anyone, never mention it outside the game. Break any rule and you are out forever. Nick advances. So do his classmates. Then Erebos starts asking for something more. Not in-game quests but real tasks, carried out in the actual world. Follow this person. Deliver this object. The line between the game and everyday life gets harder to locate. Nick keeps playing. He cannot stop. Then the game gives him an order he cannot complete without crossing a line that cannot be uncrossed. Erebos tells him to kill someone. Nick has to decide what the game actually is, who is running it, and whether he has already gone too far to walk away.
Genres: mystery, thriller, young-adult, psychological-thriller, 21st-century, dark
Vibes: dark, gripping, immersive, psychological, suspenseful, thought-provoking
Tropes: corruption-arc, moral-descent, peer-pressure, unreliable-reality
Setting: London
Period: 21st-century
440 pages · Paperback · Annick Press
Content warnings: addiction, murder