My Rating:
Plot Tease
Joey Harker isn't a hero. In fact, he's the kind of guy who gets lost in his own house. But then one day, Joey gets really lost. He walks straight out of his world and into another dimension.
Joey's walk between the worlds makes him prey to two terrible forces - armies of magic and science who will do anything to harness his power to travel between dimensions. When he sees the evil those forces are capable of, Joey joins an army of his own, versions of himself from different dimensions who all share his amazing power and who are determined to save worlds.
Book Review
InterWorld is a simple, adventurous book written by a well-known author. So I began to walk through Joey Harker's life, and then... I read the whole book in a few hours, straight through, out loud.
Gaiman is a masterful creator of wacky characters, worlds and jokes. InterWorld is no exception to this rule. There is a multidimensional life form (MDLF) that Joey meets during a walk between worlds that does not even speak, and yet "Hue" endeared himself to me very much. It communicates with colors and motions, all beautifully written and fully expressive. Hue demonstrates great courage and understanding without ever holding a conversation. By the end of the book it felt like a true friend, which was quite an authorial accomplishment.
Joey is an endearing and heroic character in the most classical sense, and is so good-hearted that it didn't even manage to annoy the cynic in me. As he experiences other worlds and evil, he grows into a stout leader. There are great themes of responsibility and justice in InterWorld, mostly driven by Joey's choices and the guidance he receives from his Mother, and his mentor Jay.
In the opening pages of the book he is definitely a floundering boy. When the story closes, Joey is fully capable of standing on his own and helping others.
The "Alternate" Joey's are all quite a bit of fun (some have wings, can levitate, have wolf-features), but very few of them are fleshed out or developed as characters far beyond their initial states. They serve their role in the story, but not much more.
Why isn't it more read? Well, syntactically, it is possible to classify this as a book as a young teens/children's read. It is not a very complicated narrative, situationally or emotionally. It isn't very long and it can feel trivial at times. As a book, it wasn't deep enough to "wow" me, so I'm only giving it 4 stars.
InterWorld was a fun ride, that can be a question starter if you really want it to be. What makes each "Joey" really the same person as the next, despite the fact that they are similar in very few ways? Is it just that they can walk through dimensions? What's a person's responsibility to their extradimensional twin?
I would recommend it to anyone looking for a break from larger, more strenuous books. This would definitely be a hit with scifi-liking teenagers.
"In an infinity of worlds, anything is not only possible, it's mandatory." - InterWorldCost: New $6.99/Used $1.99 (Available on both Nook and Kindle.)
Buy this book from Amazon.com
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