Kirsten Miller

Jason Segel

"After the newest set of virtual reality gear hits the market, Simon can't wait to test it out. But, when his friend Katherine suddenly disappears after being seen with men from the same gaming company, Simon must decide how far in the game he's willing to go to save her"--

Otherworld

Melissa Palmer

Book # 92 Read in 2017
Otherworld by Jason Segal and Kirsten Miller

This is the first book in a young adult fantasy series. Set in a virtual reality world, Simon is a troubled college kid who is back in his hometown in time to see Kat, the girl he is smitten with, get horribly hurt in an accident. Kat is now part of a virtual reality experiment which may or may not kill her. Simon goes into the virtual world after her in the hopes of saving her, but realizes a lot of people need saving. This book was engaging and a quick read, with interesting characters, lots of action, some humor and some romance. I will continue the series. I received this book from the Amazon Vine program in exchange for a honest review.

Kelsey Lynn

More like 1.5 stars 
 Otherworld is the first YA book by Jason Segel, more well known for his acting, I know him as Marshall on How I Met Your Mother. It revolves around the beta testing of a new advanced VR game that is beyond anything the world has seen, called Otherworld. Our protagonist Simon has wealthy parents and manages to snag two rigs for the game for the low, low price of 6k. He gives one to his best friend Kat, in hopes that it'll get her to start talking to him. However, after one night in the game, his rig get's smashed by his mad father, and Kat ends up in a coma after an accident. She has what is known as "locked-in" syndrome, and The Company (the creators of Otherworld have created an even more advanced piece of technology that they are testing on candidates like Kat. It involves a chip on the back of the neck and a visor, but no haptic gloves or motion controls, it connects straight into the user's brain, allowing them to be free of their broken bodies. They can utilize all five senses in this virtual world, and The Company seemingly hopes it'll help undo their "locked in" ailment. However, not is all as it seems, we wouldn't have a story otherwise, as there a few too many "locked in" cases in the New Jersey area, an extremely rare condition. Convinced The Company is up to no good, and aided by an unknown helper, Simon must utilize the chip to go in after Kat and try and find her, and hopefully bring her home. Because you know how it goes, you die in the game, you die in real life.
 Sounds pretty legit right? Well, almost legit. If it wasn't an eerily similar plotline to an eerily similarly titled book, OtherLAND by Tad Williams, William's book was released in 1996 and featured a near future world where VR is pretty standard. The main character's little brother falls into a coma while in a VR game, and she discovers an unnerving amount of other children have as well in a short time. She must enter the game and try and find her brother and hopefully bring him home.
 Similar right? Too so, unfortunately, primarily because of the names. But I decided to give them the benefit of the doubt, and I'm a sucker for VR books (though rarely are they done well, Ready Player One was a pile of hot garbage). 
 I accidentally read this in about 4-5 hours. I didn't mean to, I was having a bought of insomnia, so I decided to give it ago, this lead to a 3 or so hour marathon, and then finishing it the next morning. This book has one thing going for it, it is fast paced, an easy read, and for the most part, kept my interest. However, it was so poorly planned, executed, and the characters were so incredibly underdeveloped and utilized it was painful.
 We'll start with the characters. Simon, our protagonist, is the Gary Stu of all Gary Stu characters. Utterly un-unique and undeveloped, but rocking that snarky attitude that authors these days so love. His only attempt at being characterized is he has a big nose. He is also not a good guy at all. He is rich, spoiled, bratty, and self-centered. The authors didn't give any development as to his motivations or why he's the way he is, and therefore we garner no sympathy for it. Seemingly, he is just grumpy about being rich? He forces his opinion on everyone, throws tantrums and thinks he's the most essential thing in the world. His lady love, Kat, is a poor girl who lives beyond a forest from his house. Our only development regarding their relationship is that they've known each other for nearly a decade and played in the woods and games together. This is all we're given to believe in their romance. She cut contact with him, saying she needs space and he loses his mind. Straight up stalking her, waiting outside of her house, calling her constantly and overall not respecting her request. She must be in trouble (and she is, but still) if she doesn't want to talk to him. He even threatens some classmates to release nudes of them because they call her a slut. That's... not a cool and empowering moment, that's a jerk. He multiple times in the book makes it clear he doesn't care about other people's lives and will kill people to save Kat, who by the way, is getting through the situation just fine on her own. Other's are not allowed to have convictions, only his matter. When other's are willing to kill for something bigger than them, it's wrong, but if he has to kill for just Kat, it's perfectly fine. The authors attempted to make him likable by giving him a handful of moments where he acted holier than thou, but these moments fell flat because I just did not believe that Simon believed in them.
 Kat is a noncharacter, she is there solely as a plot device for Simon, obscenely pretty, sweet, perfect. Since the book talks in the first person from Simon's perspective, Kat is honestly only present or mentioned a handful of times in the book beyond "I've got to find Kat." She could easily be replaced with someone else, any other character, and it wouldn't affect the plot. That there is the main problem. Every character is so underdeveloped that you could play musical chairs with their roles and it wouldn't matter. There was obviously a paragraph written somewhere in the author's notes encompassing these characters, and that's it because nothing is given int he book to help us understand motive or action or reason. This made all emotional moments fall completely and utterly flat. When Simon's father destroys his rig, we're supposed to hate him, to feel rage like Simon does, but I sure as heck didn't, because I have no context for Simon's relationship with his father. To be honest, maybe I'm too old, I turn 30 this month. I know that if my 18 year old son, who just got kicked out of school for doing something illegal (at least I'm under the impression he did, we learn he didn't), who I've given every opportunity in life, spent 6k of my money on a videogame for his girlfriend (who I've never met mind you) and him... I'd smash it too. Actually, I'd return it, because 6k!
 The whole book feels like this, though, I call it bullet point writing. The authors outlined, this happened, and then this happened, etc. But never bothered to ask "Why did this happen" or edit it to be "this happened BECAUSE this happened." The author tried to create a world based story with a character-driven story in it, this is very doable, look at "The Lord of the Rings" we went all over that realm, but always for a good reason, every place we stopped in progressed the plot, gave the protagonist an important thing that they needed to succeed. Otherworld does not do this. They wanted to show us their ideas, so they delivered them in choppy pointless bits. The first night in the game, Simon goes from the starter town to an ice cave in an evening. This ice cave ends up being the goal of the book. Yet somehow, in the week he was away from the game, a million things are in between the starter town and the ice field. Level 1 is the starter town itself, then Level 2 a cave with monkey's and some baddie beta testers, then Level 3, a cannibal volcano town, then Level 4 a high tech futuristic town. It took him DAYS to get to the ice field. This inconsistency drove me insane, and these scenes were boring as all get out. Nothing happens that furthers the plot, no character development happens, it's literally just filler in the attempt to world build. Don't get me wrong, many aspects were unique and exciting, the rogue code essentially creating new creatures and inhabitants of this world, that was cool. But in the end, they were just bugs and code, and I failed to feel the emotions the characters did for them, the feeling that Otherworld should be left alone and humans should stay away because these creatures are alive and deserve to live. Maybe I play too many games because it's just bad code. It's doable, Wreck it Ralph made me emotionally involved with code, but this book didn't. 
 The biggest issue is this shotty worldbuilding, as it wasted space for the actual plot, if you took this unnecessary filler out (because it really adds nothing) the meat of this story (well, gristle) is maybe a novella length. The twists were predictable and failed to leave any impact because I cared and invested in none of the characters. The authors were unable to pick the style of the book they were going for, or research media that accomplished what they were going for. Hell watch LOTR, and you'd learn how to write something better than this. There is this common misconception that because it's YA, it can be less than, you can dumb it down to extreme levels and put forward poorly written garbage. But this isn't true, and young adult readers are fully capable of reading well plotted and written books. If anything, they should be reading them. I do not give leniency for YA books and forgive them of these faults just because of their audience intention. Not when we have books like Redwall and Harry Potter out there showing that it can be written well and people WANT it to. 
 Jason Segel should really read some books on writing and try again, some cool concepts were here, but they were entirely overshadowed by the complete and utter inability to plan a book.
 This is usually the point of my review where I say "what a wasted concept" but it wasn't, a perfectly good book with this concept is out there, just switch World with Land, and you've got it.

Sonja H

Ich bin eher zufällig über diesen Titel gestolpert und da mich alles interessiert, was Realität und Fantasie vermischt, war ich auf diese Geschichte sehr gespannt, zumal gerade der Folgeband erschienen ist.

Der Einstieg fiel mir ehrlich gesagt ein wenig schwer. Alles las sich ein wenig ungelenk: jetzt sind wir hier, jetzt machen wir das, da ist der, nun gehen wir dorthin,…
Aber da ich das Buch überwiegend vor dem Schlafen las und ohnehin nicht mehr viel Energie für Anspruchvolleres hatte, blieb ich darin hängen.

Je weiter ich mich durch die Erzählung bewegte, umso besser fand ich sie.
Das lag nicht unbedingt an den Charakteren, die eher flach sind und sich etwas vorhersehbar verhalten. Doch die Welt als solche ist recht gut gelungen und die Überschneidung mit der Realität wurde spannender als anfangs angenommen.

„Otherworld“ mag kein herausragendes Werk sein, beinhaltet aber einige interessante Ideen und ein facettenreiches Worldbuilding.
Ich habe bereits mit Band 2 begonnen, weil mich die Story gut unterhalten hat.

Jessica Williamson

3.75 Stars

To start, I don't read a lot of Sci-fi type novels so, I cannot judge this based on other popular Sci-fi novels like many others can.

That being said, I did quite enjoy this book. The MC is hard to like, but I think that's the point. There were other likable characters (Carole!) that made up for what Simon was lacking. Honestly, I think Simon is becoming a really overused name in the world of YA, along with the fact that Kat has red hair. 

Also, I feel like maybe this book was from the wrong perspective. I'm calling it as if we were to see the Harry Potter series from the eyes of Ron Weasley (another character I don't particularly care for, sue me). I mean, I guess I get why it's from his perspective but it just feels wrong. Like, he's nothing special. He's kind of a blithering idiot really.

So, now you're wondering, why did I like this thing, aren't you? Ok here's why. This book has an interesting perspective on the morals behind creating a world where one can live out their most carnal fantasies. It brings to light a darkness within human nature and makes you wonder why we feel the things we do. Murder, gambling, drugs, rage, hate, consumerism, grandiose narcissism. 

It makes you ask things like, "If you could go into a VR game this deep and be anyone and do anything you want, would you?" 

This book definitely makes you think about modern society and how we often take something innocent that is supposed to help the masses and turn it into a cash cow that instead ends up hurting the modern consumer more than helping while filling the pockets of its creators (of those who stole it from the creators as it often is). 

It's a dark look into the world we could actually find ourselves in sometime in the near future. 

So why did I like this book with an unlikeable main character that was totally predictable in a lot of cases? Because it made me think. It made me wonder about the human experience and what exactly it is that makes us do what we do. 

It's like how we get fascinated by serial killers. We aren't engrossed in what they did because we're studying how to be like them (at least, most of us aren't) we're into it because we want to know what could possibly make the human mind even think of doing something like this and pretending it's okay. 

If you're into books that make you think, this is the book for you. If you're into books with crude humor, this is also the book for you. If you like Jason Segel's humor/characters, this is the book for you.

Kaeli Wolf 

I enjoy the writing style. This is definitely different than anything else I've read before and is worth the read.

Roos Kuijper 

Unfortunately, not my kind of book:(

Dit boek behoort absoluut tot mijn meest teleurstellende boeken van 2017. De enige reden dat ik dit boek heb uitgelezen is vanwege de Hebban leesclub waarvoor ik dit boek mocht lezen. Anders had ik dit boek absoluut niet uitgelezen. 
Mijn eerste probleem lag al gelijk bij de hoofdpersoon: Simon. We lezen het verhaal vanuit zijn perspectief en als ik ben is Simon nogal raar. Ondanks dat het verhaal van Simons perspectief wordt verteld, voelde ik totaal geen connectie met hem. Om toch een positief punt over Simon te noemen: zijn loyaliteit. Niet alleen richting zijn enige vriendin Katy, maar ook richting de vrienden die hij tijdens het spel maakt. Voor de rest had ik helaas heel weinig met Simon. 
Het idee achter het boek is erg goed, jammer genoeg werkte de uitwerking voor mij niet. Ik denk dat dit komt door de schrijfstijl. Tijdens het verhaal switch je tussen de VR-wereld en de echte wereld. Steeds als ik een beetje in het verhaal zat werd ik er weer uitgehaald doordat we van wereld switchte. Ik werd totaal niet getriggerd om door te lezen. 
De VR-wereld is interessant en ik vond het een fascinerend idee en ook realistisch. Wat ik alleen heel jammer vond was dat ik de wereld niet echt voor mij kon zien. Dat deed voor mijn gevoel echt afbreuk aan mijn leeservaring.
Wat ik echt super vreemd vond was dat einde. Het voelde totaal niet als een einde aan en volgens mij ontging mij het punt van het einde. Het was echt super vaag!
Helaas was Otherworld het gewoon niet voor mij. Misschien komt het ook doordat ik niet in het hele game wereldje zit. Hoewel het voor mij niet het boek was kan ik mij wel voorstellen dat andere van dit boek zullen genieten! Laat je dus door mijn recensie niet al te veel afschrikken.

Joana

Simon is the protagonist of this story, and he isn’t the typical geek, shy, and sweet boy, he’s actually quite problematic. He is bold, confident, rich, loyal, and not as attractive as you might think. Since he has such a laid back attitude, he often gets himself into trouble, and he doesn’t have any friends. Well, except for Kat. She is Simon’s best friend, and for some reason, their friendship isn’t as good as it used to be. She has pushed him away and started hanging out with some not-recommended-people. Between the stubbornness and the jealousy of losing the only person he really cares about, Simon tries everything to get closer to her again. And that’s when a strange accident happens. All of a sudden Kat is in a hospital bed with locked-in syndrome. Unable to speak or move, the Company (the company holder of the game Otherworld) offers an opportunity to change Kat’s life with the virtual reality game. Instead of her watching the world pass by, she can walk, talk, eat and be herself again even if it’s all fake. Quickly, Simon realises that nothing is as simple as the doctors are trying to pass on, and he will do everything to bring his best friend back.

If you already don’t know, I LOVE Ready Player One by Ernest Cline. That book was written for an American-80s-baby version of me, just because I didn’t know most of the pop culture references. Otherwise, I’m a sucker for it!! And being a gamer, a geek at heart, and a bookworm, I adore when all these things are combined. So I couldn’t pass on the opportunity to read Otherworld since it’s advertised to be perfect for fans o Ready Player One. At first, I was eager to read a book similar to RPO without the 80s pop culture. Although, I was a bit scared that both books might be too similar, and Otherworld would end up as a cheap or failed attempt to be like RPO. After all, the book was partially written by a celebrity and some times those books only are published because they are assured money.

Now, after reading Otherworld, I can tell one thing for sure: It’s nothing like Ready Player One!! Yes, I’m a fan of Ernest Cline’s book, and I enjoyed Otherworld, but not as much though. And yes, both stories unravel around a virtual reality game, but other than that they are nothing alike. In RPO the characters have a passion for gaming as something that motivates them, that’s why they learn a lot about 80s pop culture and gaming history. While in Otherworld, the characters are gamers as well, but they don’t show that same passion and intention to save the game. Actually, the purpose of Otherworld is to save the real world, not the game.

Instead of comparing Otherworld with Ready Player One, I would quicker compare it with The Matrix. Both stories are still far from each other except the concept of people living in an imagined world, being able to taste food and have other experiences – if you know what I mean *wink wink* – even though nothing is real, they feel like it is. There was also another crucial moment that made me instantly think about The Matrix and that I think it’s the more explicit one but is a spoiler, so you have to trust me here. Even though the players know that it’s just a game, it still can be so immersive that it’s easy to lose the sense of reality.

A big part of this book is about the quest, the entire journey throughout the various places in Otherworld. All the events inside the game develop slowly to give room to world-building. And every time Simon is not inside the game, the story picks up the passe giving the feeling that he is spending more time inside the game than in the real world. I usually don’t like when a story develops slowly and this was no exception. There were some parts where I felt nothing was happening, the story wasn’t evolving, and it was a bit boring. It also didn’t help how hard it was for me to immerse in the world of Otherworld.

Understanding everything that exists in the game wasn’t easy. I think the story went over the idea of a video game and started creating a fantasy world. At some point the “creatures” of Otherworld were more than pieces of code inside the game, they were “alive”, and their behaviour was similar to an AI which confused me even more. Was the game an AI itself instead? Or was it really just a game? And if so, why would the “creatures” act so strangely when it’s just a game? Possibly these questions might be a focal point on the second book (Otherearth). Either way, understanding the game became harder and harder as I progressed far in the book.

In terms of mystery, the story didn’t have much. Some of the plot points were fairly easy to predict, like the romance, the reason for the accident, and Kat’s locked-in syndrome. Those are just a few of the things that as soon as I read them, I knew what was going to happen and how the story would progress. There were still a couple of moments here and there that I didn’t quite guess, but it was pretty obvious they were part of the story for a reason. Despite that, the book was fun! In the end, what truly matters is the quest, the journey Simon has to take to try and save Kat. The mystery is only there as a compliment, as a reason that sets in motion all the events.

Lisa Beasley

I liked this book for the most part though the main character did annoy me sometimes with his need to save the girl who was doing pretty well on her own to be fair. It's an interesting idea and some parts are written really well, I'd actually like to get to know some of the supporting characters better (like Busara). It was fairly enjoyable and I will read the sequel. I just wasn't blown away. I give it 3.5 stars.

The first installment in the new Last Reality series by the authors of the "New York Times"-bestselling Nightmares! series. Ideal for fans of HBO's "Westworld, Otherworld" asks the question: If technology can deliver everything we want, how much are we willing to pay?

Otherworld

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