Polybius, by Collin Armstrong

Book 24 for my 2026 goal of 36 books for the year! Comfortably ahead with my reading. My link to the book is through my bookshop.org affiliate account, which means I may earn a small commission if you buy from there. Some books have an idea so compelling that I end up buying them multiple times, albeit inadvertently! This is what happened with Polybius (2026), by Collin Armstrong, which I recently got at a bookstore because it looked compelling only to realize that I had bought it a couple of months earlier and forgotten about. I decided I had better read it before I ended up buying it a third time. If you know I was born in 1971 and was a kid through the heyday of 1980s arcade games, you can see why I was compelled. The story centers on a mysterious video game of unknown provenance that finds its way into an unsuspecting community and wreaks havoc. The book is set in 1982 in a small seaside town in California called Tasker Bay. High school student Andi Wilson is deeply unhappy with…