InterWorld
The Inter World series, Book 1
Neil Gaiman and Michael Reaves
HarperCollins
Fiction, YA Fantasy
*** (Okay)
DESCRIPTION: High school sophomore Joey Harker is what you might call "directionally challenged"; he's gotten lost in his own home more than once, and asking him to navigate downtown Greenville would be like asking him to plot a course through the heart of the Amazon. So when his social studies teacher - notorious for his unconventional teaching methods - decides to test his class by dropping them off at random places around town to find their way back (without cell phones or other cheats), it's inevitable that Joey would get separated from his two teammates... only he outdoes himself this time. Not only does he get lost in Greenville, he gets lost in the wrong Greenville; somehow, he slips across the border between worlds and winds up in an alternate version of Earth, one where the cars are weird colors, the Golden Arches are tartan green, and where Mom and Dad had a girl Josephine instead of Joey.
Then his day gets even weirder... and even worse.
Before he knows it, he's facing a stranger with a mirror for a face, cybernetic attackers on hovering disks, and a mind-controlling witch with two inhuman minions. Joey learns that he is a Walker, capable of moving between the near-countless alternate Earths, and that he has just become a potentially powerful prize in an ongoing power struggle between the magical HEX and the technological Binary empires, who seek to impose their rule across all worlds of the Altiverse. His only hope for freedom lies with the InterWorld, a small guerrilla force of operatives that struggles to preserve freedom and balance between magic and science... a force composed of sometimes wildly-divergent alternate versions of himself, all different genders and ages and borderline different species. But Joey's disastrous first Walk makes him some powerful enemies and few friends, even among the InterWorld agents. How can he save the Altiverse when he might not even be able to save himself?
REVIEW: This looked like a quick, somewhat lightweight read (or listen, rather, as it was an audiobook loan from the local library though Overdrive), which is about where my mind seems to be lately. I find Gaiman a bit hit-and-miss, but the concept looked interesting, and - again - I was looking for something quick and not hugely demanding. On that level, Interworld delivers. Beyond that... not so much.
Joey is one of those main characters who is special because the audience is told he's special. We in the audience are shown that he can Walk between worlds, an understandably rare gift... one that, apparently, only iterations of Joey can accomplish. But I never really experienced his specialness, aside from everyone from his enemies to his other selves insisting that he's some sort of prodigy. He stumbles, he bumbles, he gets on everyone's bad side for mistakes and misunderstandings and just being the main character in a story that requires him to be mistaken and misunderstood, he wavers between insecure outsider to spouter of glib comebacks, he ticks all the boxes in the boilerplate "underdog teen protagonist who must prove himself to everyone, including himself" checklist, but I honestly never felt the potential everyone saw in him, particularly the iteration of him that I had to follow around the tale. The baddies are cruel and overpowered, but are ultimately cardboard caricatures who ooze in and out of scenes, dripping condescension and spouting monologues (and revealing major parts of their Evil Plans in front of their opponent), seeming to exist merely to torment Joey. Descriptions start feeling repetitive and drawn out, not helped by an issue with the audiobook version: one of the "keys" to finding InterWorld is a series of very annoying electronic beeps and blurps and buzzes - a sort of mnemonic device to help a Walker home in on the hidden base - that sounded like some major error from my cell phone... and which the audiobook insists on using, repeatedly and without warning, throughout the story. I came close to clipping a half-star off the rating for auditory annoyance alone.
There are some good ideas and images, plenty of action sequences (even if several hinge on Joey's luck, good or bad, getting him into or out of trouble), and lots of potential in the setup. A few bits come close to living up to that potential. The rest, unfortunately, fell flat for me. As I've said before (too many times), I've read worse, but even for a lightweight timekiller of a story, I admit I'd hoped for a little better.
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