Interworld

I started reading Neil Gaiman and Michael Reaves' Interworld right before my trip to Toronto. I was hoping to have it finished before I went, but I was a bit too busy and ended up having to finish it on the plane.

Overall I thought it was okay. There was something missing from it, and I can't quite put my finger on what that was. The characters were awesome. The idea was great. And the plot seemed okay. But it just didn't have the usual spark that I associate with a Gaiman book.

The premise of the book is that a boy, Joey Harker, has the ability to travel between worlds. This is a power shared by all of his counterparts in the other worlds. And it is for this reason that all of his incarnations are hunted by two opposing factions who wish to harness this power to fuel their own dimension hopping ships. While many of the Harkers have succumbed, there are some who have escaped, banding together in an effort to stop either side from winning.

So yes, most of the characters in the book are Joey Harkers from other worlds. Only they are in most cases extremely unique individuals. There is Jo, the girl who has wings that are too small to fly with unless she is on a magic world, Jerzy, the boy who looks similar to Joey except that he has feathers rather than hair. Jakon, the wolf girl. The list goes on and on. Both male and female.

One of my major complaints was that we are only shown the magic side of the spectrum, personified by HEX. HEX is a group of wizards who have found a way to boil the Harkers down to their very essence, then sealing that essence into jars which are used to power their ships. They use magic spells and whatnot, and come from worlds with fairy creatures. On the other side of the spectrum is the Binary, who come from scientific worlds. They freeze the Harkers and scientifically extract their essence to power their spaceships. But other than one brief encounter, the book focuses exclusively on HEX.

My other complaint has to do with Michael Reaves. He wrote another book that I read (before I started this blog) called Darth Maul: Shadow Hunter, which was an extremely bad book. (Basically, it made Maul look really bad. It started by saying how awesome he is, and then he spent the majority of the book failing to capture and kill a jedi padawan, a droid and some guy. The end was awesome, but it just couldn't make up for the rest of the book). So I was rather hesitant to pick up another book by him, but I made an exception because this is a Neil Gaiman. I am thinking that it is due to this bias that the book failed to shine in my eyes. It was fun, but it wasn't spectacular.