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Review originally posted here.It's kind of unfair to compare Erebos to Ready Player One, but that was what I assumed going in.  The only thing the two books have in common, really, is that they both take place at least partially inside video games and that I enjoyed them both immensely.  Nick Dunmore is a 16 year old student whose classmates have begun acting...strange.  Several of them have been passing around jewel cases with a MYSTERIOUS DVD.  Questioning his basketball teammate gets him no where, no one at all is willing to answer any questions.  One day this girl he doesn't particularly care for comes up to him and asks him to step into this corner with her.  He only agrees because he thinks he's finally going to learn what all the hush-hushiness is about.  She hands him a game.  It's not just a game, though.  It's a secret game.  A game that you can't even talk about with other players.  A game that has kids ditching school or showing up with bloodshot eyes - that leaves them drooling on their desks from lack of sleep.  When he gets home and boots it up, he gets sucked into a world that will impact his real life - not just that of his game character.I don't want to get all spoilery for you guys because I think this is one that you might want to check out for yourselves.  The plot was solid, the pacing was nice and the majority of the main characters were well developed.  There was kind of a neat device where all time spent in game was written in the present tense, and everything in Nick's real life was written in the past.  It took a bit to get used to, but once I did I thought it was an interesting way of making sure the reader is as fully immersed as Nick is.The few problems that I had with it were kind of minor nitpicks.  The formatting was pretty wonky for my reader.  I'm not sure if this is because it was a review galley, or if this is the way it will be for everyone (the book was released this January).  If you buy a digital copy, you might want to check that out ahead of time.  You see that eye on the cover?  That's at the top of every new chapter.  Because of my screwy formatting, it wouldn't even always be there - it sometimes ended up in the middle of the page, two pages after the chapter began.  A slight irritant.The other problem I had with it was possibly because of the translation.  This book was originally published in German in 2010, and the strange idioms used sometimes may just have not translated well.Based on Mandy at Adventures in Borkdom's rubric, Erebos by Ursula Poznanski scores a solid 4.1.  Thanks to Annick Press for providing a review copy!