More Than This

More Than This is a 2013 young adult speculative fiction novel written by American author Patrick Ness. More Than This follows Seth Wearing, a teenage boy who has died by suicide and wakes up in a strange, desolate version of his childhood hometown. Seth explores what he believes is his personal hell only to learn that humanity has entered an alternate online reality to escape ecological collapse in the “real” world. Seth’s “death” disconnected him from the simulation and forces him to confront his own mental health as a gay teenager who was outed against his will to his entire community, as well as the death of his younger brother. While disconnected from the simulation, Seth meets other teenagers who also “died” and found themselves waking up. Together with Tomasz and Regine, Seth avoids the “Driver,” a machine that places rogue people back in the simulation, while trying to understand his own place in the world and the circumstances that brought him to suicide. The novel deals with themes such as the relationship between Life and Death, The Effects of Trauma, and