Review: Interworld

I've always loved fantasy novels, but my favourites are never the kind with dragons and castles. I like the slightly weird fantasy, the kind with interesting concepts and a little bit of sci fi, too. Interworld, by Neil Gaiman and Michael Reaves, is definitely this sort of fantasy.

Joey Harker is an ordinary sixteen year old boy with absolutely no sense of direction. When his tenth grade social studies teacher assigns a test that requires him to find his way to a certain place in town, he doesn't think he has much chance of passing the class--especially not when he walks through a cloud of fog into a world where the McDonald's sign is plaid and his mother doesn't know who he is. Joey soon finds that his Earth is part of the Altiverse, a collection of parallel Earths separated by the In-Between, a strange realm that owes a lot to M.C. Escher, Picasso, and a lava lamp. The Altiverse must be held in balance between those Earths governed by magic, and those governed by science, and it is up to all the Joey Harkers from all the Earths to do this.

I love stories that make use of parallel world theories, and this one is especially clever, with the idea of all the parallel versions of the same person having the power to Walk between worlds. I expect nothing less of Neil Gaiman than thoroughly imaginative storytelling and wonderfully bizarre visuals, and he has certainly delivered on this. It's a great book, meant for young adults but quite universally enjoyable.

Library adventures

It's been quite a while since I went to the library and brought home a stack of books to read. After finishing The Post-Office Girl, though, I was a bit at a loss, and felt the need for a novel to just sit down and read through. Most of the books on my to-read stack at home are nonfiction, somehow. Whenever I go to the library without a specific book in mind, I like to pick several, on the theory that at least one will catch my immediate fancy.I wanted a novel that wouldn't be a lot of work, maybe with a bit of romance. I have a vague notion that The China Garden, by Liz Berry, was on my to-read list, but it doesn't appear to be there. It's about an old English country estate, which seems exactly the thing to suit my present tastes. Mrs. Palfrey at the Claremont, by Elizabeth Taylor, is one I've been meaning to read since I saw the film, and though it's not quite the kind of book I want at the moment, it's the kind of book I may well want once I've satisfied my desire for fluff (respectable, well-written fluff, but still fluff). I've been meaning to read Georgette Heyer for a while, and her Regency settings fit well into my recent Jane Austen kick. Black Sheep, which is the book I settled on to begin reading, is perfectly lovely, and exactly what I want at the moment. And then I thought I'd like to read some more Neil Gaiman, so I found Interworld, which was co-written with Michael Reaves, as it was the only one to be immediately had.

There's something so satisfying about about a stack of library books.