ABANDONED. Science Fiction-book with a group of people getting sucked into a video game. Spoilers.

[Mille]

I read it sometime around/before 2011 from the local library(which sadly doesn't have any records f books they no longer have), and it didn't seem too old; it felt like someone who grew up with advanced technology writing it, and not someone trying to imagine how the future would be. I am not 100%sure about the country of origin since I read it translated into Danish, but I think it's originally written in English. It's not Jumanji, Labyrinth of Reflections, Zathura, The Gauntlet, Heir Apparent, Ready Player One, or User Unfriendly. I remember the cover being in a sort of cartoon-style, and very dark (I think it was supposed to depict a scene at night time in the book), with the main characters on it. At my library it was in the children's section, but they had sex and the city there too, so I'm not sure if it actually is. It might have been teen-up, since it felt pretty intense and such in some places.

(I HAVE SPOILERS TO THE CLIMAX OF THE BOOK, I WILL MARK THOSE CLEARLY)

There's a group of people that at the start gets sucked into the game, and have to find a way to get out of it. The characters I remember the most are Main Guy, Little Sister of Main Guy(kinda iffy, might have been the sister of someone else), and another girl. At some point at the beginning of the book, they're trying to kill some monkeys for food, but they realize that their attacks and weapns can't harm the monkeys. Then they try to hurt each other (I believe it was because they started arguing, but I'm not too sure), but they realize they can't harm each other either, and I think it's because they're supposed to be a team in the game. I might be mixing this up with another book, but I seem to remember that one of the people in the game claim that either them or someone in their family are famous for having invented something. if I had to make a guess, it was a type of bowl or something that could be used in the microwave, since I also seem to remember a conversation about one of them mentioning they would love to have a microwave so they could eat food, and one of the others goes "but we don't have electricity." I believe the setting is something like a jungle, or a forest. Then, as they get attacked by the game's enemies, when the people on the team die in the game, they disappear from the game, and the survivors fear that they died in the real world as well. At some point they reach what I think is a tribe in the jungle/forest, and they meet the creator of the game who explains his vision for the game and for virtual rreality in general, and I remember that he used the example of being able to try on clothing online before you go down to buy it.

(SPOILERS FOR THE CLIMAX UNDER THIS)

Then something happens, and the survivors that are still left(which I remember to be at least Main Guy and Little Sister), have to either fight or try and escape something, and the outcome looks pretty grim, until the Little Sister (who was to my memory been written as pretty useless/annoying throughout the entire book) does something that ends up making them able to win the game, and thus escape I think they have to make it to a certain building to be able to log out, and she found a secret path, or befriended one of the enemies, or something like that.

Then in the kind of like epilogue, it's revealed that the people that died in the game are still alive, as they had exchanged information in the game and thus are able to contact them. I don't remember if there was an explanation for why they couldn't just log in again, but something tells me that when they died in the game, the stuff they used to access the game broke.

I hope someone knows this! It was really good, but I haven't been able to find it at all.

[Lobstergirl, au gratin]

Check these lists:

https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/8...

https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/1...

https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/1...

https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/1...

https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/4...

[Kris]

No response, moving to Abandoned folder.

Mille (OP) was last active on the site in August 2021.