OtherEarth by Jason Segel and Kirsten Miller - HIGH

OtherEarth by Jason Segel and Kirsten Miller, 310 pages.  Delacorte (Random), 2018.  $19

Language: R (100+ swears, 7 “f”); Mature Content: PG (naked mentioned); Violence: PG-13 (lots of VR deaths)

BUYING ADVISORY: HS - OPTIONAL

AUDIENCE APPEAL: HIGH

Simon and Kat have escaped from OtherWorld, but their problems are not over.  They need to track down the home of OtherWorld’s now dead creator, hoping to find a safer way back in, because the disk interface is corrupt and the Company has been killing people in order to debug the system. Simon and Kat know that the Children inside OtherWorld are sentient beings, but the only players still allowed inside are hellbent on killing as many of them as possible for sport. If he goes in wearing a disk, Simon risks death. But he has more than one world to save

I’m still not happy with the throwaway swears in Segel’s series, but kids who are into Ready Player One and other VR-based novels will want another.  They are all very similar to each other.  This quote is the best thing about this book:

“People get so excited that we have all this fun new technology.  They never sit back ad consider how dangerous it might be. We’re just a bunch of monkeys playing with a box of matches”.

Cindy, Library Teacher, MLS