That being said, though, I like Poznanski’s writing and am eager to try her adult (I think?) mystery Fünf, which unfortunately is yet to be translated. The translation is somewhat clumsy, I have to say, no one talks like that (do they? in London?) and there are some German words and phrases that are oddly out of place in that setting. Like I said, for a young-adult novel, this is pretty enjoyable.
But you’d be crazy not to expect that from school kids and the fact is, when at the end, the authors reveals who each game character was in real life, she does shatter quite a few of the cliches! I have to say, though, the stereotypes are annoying: the oriental boy, the fat anti-social girl and the shrill girly-girl to name a few. And the ending is at once happy, sad and well plotted. The romance between Nick and Emily is just gooey enough to not be overdone. When Nick joins his once-best-now-estranged friends to defeat the game, we meet the lovable Viktor, the twenty something gaming expert, who, in the face of bad news, looks like a troubled teddy bear. The game isn’t so much scary as wicked and it seems to relish the havoc it creates in the schools, the people who are kicked out show signs of withdrawal, becoming mysteriously weak and ill those who don’t participate are goaded by the game and its players to join in the fun, or threatened if they still refuse! Erebos is the God of Darkness and makes a wonderful name for this dark game. For the longest time, Erebos sounded a lot to me like Cetebos but of course, that has nothing to do with it. The descriptions of the game are delightfully vivid. When Nick is playing the game, Sarius takes over the narration and we can easily put ourselves in his shoes! The game draws from Greek mythology and that makes the imagery all the more intriguing. When Nick is sent on a deadly assignment, he has to choose between fantasy and reality. Most importantly, the game is manipulative and the few kids who refuse to play have to pay the price. No one can cheat the game nor hack into it or try to modify it. It is complex and intelligent and leaks suspiciously into reality the players are assigned tasks that they need to carry out in real life, the game can tell when they’re lying. The characters have to fight battles and earn points and find wish crystals and all that sort of gamey stuff I understand little about the ultimate goal of every character is to reach the Inner Circle of five champions who will fight the final battle against Ortolan, the enemy. Erebos is a multi-player computer game and Nick’s character is a dark elf called Sarius. Always play alone, never talk about the game, and never tell anyone your player name. When he finally gets the white square package from Brynne, he is intrigued by its rules. The kids in sixteen year old Nick’s school are all into some sort of game, passing DVDs around in secret and he is desperate to find out what it is.
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