Otherland

Renie Sulaweyo, a teacher in near-future South Africa, discovers that children — including her brother Stephen — have logged into the network and cannot escape. Clues point to a mysterious golden city called Otherland, but every investigator who gets too close ends up dead.

Otherland — a private, multidimensional universe built over two generations by the most powerful minds of the twenty-first century — is also one of the world's best-kept secrets, controlled by a ruthless cartel known as the Grail Brotherhood. A small band of adventurers has penetrated Otherland's veil, but they are now trapped, unable to return to their own bodies. Scattered across wildly different simulated worlds — an Ice Age tribe, a land invaded by aliens, a war between a man of straw and a man of tin — they must find a way to reunite while evading a sociopathic killer tasked with ensuring none of them survive to reveal the truth.

The Grail Brotherhood has built the most powerful simulation network imaginable while manipulating the minds of thousands of children. Renie Sulaweyo, the Bushman !Xabbu, and their companions navigate a treacherous course from unfinished lands to an endless labyrinthine House, pursuing a sociopathic killer who has taken one of their group. No closer to saving her brother Stephen, Renie senses something is deeply wrong with the Otherland network itself. As their group races toward Priam's Walls in the heart of Troy, the Brotherhood has set a date for the Ceremony that will seal the fate of Earth's children — and the network's darkest secret still awaits them.

The epic conclusion to the Otherland saga. The trapped characters journey deeper into the bizarre world of virtual realities, where they discover a multifaceted pathway to immortality — one that carries a dangerous price.