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 The Nature of Reality.

Ness was born in Virginia in 1971 and raised between Hawaii and Washington, but he now lives in London and holds dual American and British citizenship. He is most famous for his Chaos Walking young adult trilogy, published between 2008 and 2010. The series has earned numerous awards, including the 2008 Guardian Award, the 2008 James Tiptree, Jr. Award, the 2008 and 2009 Costa’s Children Book Awards, and the 2011 Carnegie Medal. More Than This also made the Carnegie shortlist and received critical acclaim. Ness is also the author of several other novels, short stories, and screenplays for adults and young adults. Ness’s works often take place in dystopian or futuristic worlds and contain philosophical undertones and LGBTQ+ themes. More Than This explores the concepts of Life and Death, The Nature of Reality, and The Effects of Trauma.

This study guide is based on the 2013 Kindle edition of the novel.

Content Warning: This guide and the novel refer to suicide, suicidal ideation, domestic abuse, anti-LGBTQ+ biases, and physical violence.

Plot Summary

After drowning himself in the ocean, high school student Seth Wearing wakes up in his long-abandoned childhood home. Confused and lost in a deserted city, he believes he is in hell and has returned to the place where his greatest trauma happened. Years ago, an escaped prisoner forced eight-year-old Seth to let him in and kidnapped Seth’s four-year-old brother Owen. Owen was found a few days later but has endured neurological conditions ever since. Consumed by his guilt and his parents’ repressed trauma after they moved to America, Seth grew up feeling isolated and longing for more. In reality, Owen was killed by his kidnapper and the grief broke Seth’s parents. Seth’s parents signed up for an experimental program to place the family in an alternate reality simulation, where they could pretend Owen never died and have their memories of the event altered. The simulation was developed as a haven for humanity in the face of ecological disaster caused by climate change.

Seth realizes that he emerged from a futuristic-looking coffin. While exploring the abandoned city, he meets Regine and Tomasz, two other teenagers who also died and woke up in this world. Together, they endeavor to find answers about their situation. Regine and Tomasz warn Seth about the Driver, a human-looking mechanical being who drives a black van and patrols the city looking for people. Seth believes that the whole situation may be a dream or a story he is making up, but Regine and Tomasz argue that it was their previous lives which were in fact a simulation.

Seth experiences vivid dreams about his past, or his life in the simulation, which illuminate his current state of mind. There, he was in love with his friend Gudmund. When their relationship was revealed, he lost the one thing that belonged only to him. Overwhelmed by his loneliness, Seth drowned himself, which caused him to wake up in the real world. Regine also died, murdered by her stepfather, and Tomasz was killed by a smuggler when his mother could not pay him. Their deaths caused them to disconnect from the simulation.

Seth’s new friends tell him about thousands of coffins stored in an old prison and he goes looking for them. When he gets there, he realizes that people plugged themselves into a simulated life and erased their memories of the real world after society collapsed due to climate change. Seth recovers his memories when the Driver attempts to reconnect him to the simulation. Tomasz and Regine save him from the Driver before the process is finished. Seth then remembers that, after Owen was kidnapped, he was in fact murdered by the escaped prisoner. Impacted by the trauma of their son’s death, Seth’s parents then decided to move online permanently, where a fake version of Owen was created.

After processing his newfound knowledge, Seth realizes that The Nature of Reality is much more complicated than he thought. Now more open and compassionate, the young boy is ready to forgive Gudmund’s flaws and work through his familial trauma with his parents. At the end of the book, he decides to return to the simulation temporarily to try and mend his relationships. The novel ends with an Open Ending, leaving room for the reader to decide what happens next and which of the two Worlds is more real, or if they are equally as real.