Overworld. Itâs more than just the worldâs most popular e-sportâfor thousands of VR teams around the globe, Overworld is life. It means fame and fortune, or maybe itâs a ticket out of obscurity or poverty. If you have a connection to the internet and four friends you trust with your life, anything is possible.
Marisa Carneseca is on the hunt for a mysterious hacker named Grendel when she receives word that her amateur Overworld team has been invited to Forward Motion, one of the most exclusive tournaments of the year. For Marisa, this could mean anythingâa chance to finally go pro and to help her family, stuck in an LA neighborhood on the wrong side of the growing divide between the rich and the poor. But Forward Motion turns out to be more than it seemsârife with corruption, infighting, and dangerâand Marisa runs headlong into Alain Bensoussan, a beautiful, dangerous underground freedom fighter who reveals to her the darker side of the forces behind the tournament. It soon becomes clear that, in this game, winning might be the only way to get out alive.
Dan Wells is the author of the Mirador series (Bluescreen, Ones and Zeroes, and Active Memory), as well as the New York Times bestselling Partials Sequence and the John Cleaver seriesâthe first book of which, I Am Not a Serial Killer, has been made into a major motion picture. He has been nominated for the Campbell Award and has won a Hugo Award and three Parsec Awards for his podcast Writing Excuses. He plays a lot of games, reads a lot of books, and eats a lot of food, which is pretty much the ideal life he imagined for himself as a child. You can find out more online at www.thedanwells.com.