Nova & Rook (vol 2): The Reputation Game
A Ground Truth Adventure
What if one number could decide your reputation, your opportunities—and whether anyone believes your warning?
Seven months after the events in Valmara, Nova Vale and Rook Mercer arrive on the storm-battered coast of Morrow Island for a new Frontier Lab assignment at Tideglass Research Station.
Waiting for them is UPGRADE: an ambitious digital platform that rewards learning, creativity, volunteering, teamwork and community action. Every completed task earns points. Every contribution affects a public profile. High scores unlock leadership roles, specialist workshops and the chance to compete for a life-changing fellowship.
Nova’s score rockets towards the top almost immediately. Rook is less impressed. The system has judged both of them before they have even stepped off the ferry—and it seems to know far more about their past than either of them agreed to share.
At first, the challenges are exciting. Students race between coastal beacons, investigate damaged routes, verify safety reports and earn rewards for helping the island. But beneath the colourful badges and leaderboards, Nova and Rook begin to find troubling questions.
Why does an accurate warning from a low-scoring student receive less attention than an outdated report from someone popular? Why are private disagreements being turned into public competitions? Why does the app send urgent opportunities at the exact moment a user is most afraid of losing their position?
And why does UPGRADE appear to understand not only what people have done—but how to pressure them into doing more?
The deeper Nova and Rook investigate, the more personal the game becomes. The platform begins using their different personalities against them: Nova’s determination to expose hidden truths, Rook’s need for technical accuracy and the unresolved tension left between them after Valmara.
Their friendship starts to fracture as every correction, disagreement and mistake becomes public evidence. The app awards points for conflict, turns incomplete stories into permanent labels and begins deciding which students deserve to be heard.
Then Storm Orla accelerates towards Morrow Island.
As rising water threatens the tidal causeway and the huge Island Unlocked challenge prepares to send teams across the island, the line between game, reputation and real-world safety begins to disappear. A warning ignored because of the person who submitted it could put lives at risk. A challenge designed to increase engagement could send a child towards danger. And a system built to recognise overlooked young people may have become something capable of controlling them.
Nova and Rook must uncover the game beneath the game before the storm reaches the island—and before reputation becomes more powerful than the truth.
The Reputation Game is an intelligent, fast-moving adventure for readers aged 12–16, combining mystery, survival, technology and friendship with urgent questions about algorithms, online identity, digital pressure, consent and fairness.
Filled with coastal danger, clever investigations, sharp humour and detailed black-and-white maps and system diagrams, this is a modern teen adventure that asks an increasingly important question:
When a system gives everyone a score, who gets to decide what a person is worth?
The Reputation Game is Book Two in the Nova & Rook: Ground Truth Adventure series and follows The Avalanche Equation.
Author: Eric Henry
Publisher: Questbound Studios Limited
ISBN: 978-1-0668783-2-1
Length: 392 pages
Recommended reading age: 12–16 years