One Hallowe'en, a group of online roleplayers summon a demon, The Prince of Nightmares. Seth, who's in charge of the game, says it's "just for fun". But disturbing things start to happen in real life: red marks appear on the foreheads of the gamers, and they're all having nightmares about a dark forest.
Secrets come out, friendships are broken, and the boundaries between the real, the virtual and the imaginary become increasingly fractured as the Prince becomes more powerful. Kay, a student at Oxford, is the only person who realises what Seth is doing - and it's up to her to stop him.
****EXCERPT****
In bed, Seth fixed his eyes on the ceiling, staring up through the dark. Sleep tugged at him, eddies dragging his thoughts around and around, fracturing them into a sinking swirl. Lines of computer code. Long sleepless nights. A list of names, waiting for payback. And before all that, a child, lost in a forest ...
****REVIEWS****
"This is one of those books I started reading late in the afternoon and then couldn't put down. I stayed up WAAAY too late reading it, because it's the sort of story where you want to read one more chapter and one more after that because you care about the characters, and you're afraid something terribile will happen to them."
-- Cheryl M. Reifsnyder
"The suspense is magnetic and constant. ... It's definitely a page-turner."
-- Bill Polm
"I'm not a gamer but I was fascinated by the dual worlds of this novel. I enjoyed the fast paced suspense of the 'real world' segments of the book but was also interested in how the online gaming part of it worked. I like a supernatural side to my novels and the way the nightmares were enmeshed in the game and the character's real lives was skillfully done."
-- Joanna Penn
Secrets come out, friendships are broken, and the boundaries between the real, the virtual and the imaginary become increasingly fractured as the Prince becomes more powerful. Kay, a student at Oxford, is the only person who realises what Seth is doing - and it's up to her to stop him.
****EXCERPT****
In bed, Seth fixed his eyes on the ceiling, staring up through the dark. Sleep tugged at him, eddies dragging his thoughts around and around, fracturing them into a sinking swirl. Lines of computer code. Long sleepless nights. A list of names, waiting for payback. And before all that, a child, lost in a forest ...
****REVIEWS****
"This is one of those books I started reading late in the afternoon and then couldn't put down. I stayed up WAAAY too late reading it, because it's the sort of story where you want to read one more chapter and one more after that because you care about the characters, and you're afraid something terribile will happen to them."
-- Cheryl M. Reifsnyder
"The suspense is magnetic and constant. ... It's definitely a page-turner."
-- Bill Polm
"I'm not a gamer but I was fascinated by the dual worlds of this novel. I enjoyed the fast paced suspense of the 'real world' segments of the book but was also interested in how the online gaming part of it worked. I like a supernatural side to my novels and the way the nightmares were enmeshed in the game and the character's real lives was skillfully done."
-- Joanna Penn
