INTERWORLD
Neil Gaiman and Michael Reaves
Eos/HarperCollins Children’s Books
Science Fiction
Hardcover: 0061238961
Paperback: 9780061238987
256 pages

• Read an Excerpt

Even though Joey Harker has lived in the same neighborhood all his life, he still gets lost looking for his own house. North, south, east, west? He can barely tell up from down. On his way home one afternoon, Joey wanders through a thick mist. When he emerges, he's in a part of town he's never seen before. He figures he's lost as usual until he looks at Rowena and realizes that she's not the girl he was walking home. When he opens the front door of his house, everything is basically the same, but some small details aren't right. Most disturbingly, his mom doesn't know who he is.

Joey runs out of the house and into a stranger wearing silver armor who identifies himself as Jay. Jay says a lot of things Joey can’t understand, but Joey doesn't have time to ask any questions --- he's too busy dodging men on airborne surfboards who are trying to catch him in a net. After a trip on a very strange ship and an escape from a witch called Lady Indigo, Joey learns from Jay that, although he can't tell right from left on his world, he's gifted with the ability to Walk, or pass between worlds that are spinoffs of Earth created from major decisions. The dangerous path between worlds, the In-Between, is the domain of Walkers (people like Joey).

Joey's mission, which he really doesn't get a choice in accepting when Jay sacrifices himself for the boy, is to go to the camp where Walkers are trained and join the interdimensional military. His first assignment out of camp is a disaster, resulting in the kidnapping and possible murder of five of his fellow recruits. The Old Man who runs the training camp decides that Joey is too much of a liability and wipes out his memory, sending him back to the home he remembers.

Only everything at home is not quite as Joey remembers it.

The blend of technology, folklore and magic in this book will remind you of Eoin Colfer's Artemis Fowl and D. J. MacHale's Pendragon series, complete with nonstop, breakneck action and thrilling fights of good versus evil. You never really get the chance to know Joey or his well, but you'll bite your nails as they fight to save Earth and all its possibilities from the not-quite-people who want nothing more than to kill Joey and use his essence as fuel. The brief glimpses of the thousands of worlds created from decisions on Earth will leave you wanting and wondering more.

   --- Reviewed by Carlie Webber

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