InterWorld by Neil Gaiman, Michael Reaves Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of InterWorld
Book Review: Fabulous Multidimensional Fun!
Summary: 4 Stars
Okay. So I'm 56, and this is written for the pre-teen market. No matter: I had a rollicking good time reading this book! Joe Harker, last guy on any team to be picked, sets out on a classroom assignment and ends up taking on some of the more fascinating evildoers this side of the 12th dimension.
I'm not going to go into the plot, other than to say "Yes!" there are spaceships, pitched battles, liberal dollops of whiz-bang techno goodies, androids, and magic spells. And terror, suspense, grief, and triumph. But that's not why this is a good book.
The book is simply written well. The dialogues are snappy without being smart-alecky, the vocabulary is a pleasing challenge, the pace is quick, the narrative never seems to lose the thread, and the character development is more than adequate. But that's not why this is a good book.
The book sets itself apart from common as dirt sci-fi multi-dimensional space operas by reaching back to a classical definition of art: art should entertain, and inform. Most contemporary sci-fi is lucky to get the "entertain" part down, much less the "inform". Interworld includes lessons for the target audience (the fearless, and fear-inspiring, pre-teen segment of our population) regarding the nature of courage, loyalty, selflessness, family, the superiority of a team vs. the concept of the superhero. There is generosity, and true pathos, in this story. There is an exquisitely wrought mother/son scene. There are tears, both the hero's, and quite possibly, yours (I'll own up to it, I splashed a few pages). Which is why this is a good book!
Book Review: Fun story, not entirely original...
Summary: 3 Stars
I've become a recent fan of Neil Gaiman, starting with The Graveyard Book. Interworld was a fun book, and it kept my attention, but I can't help but compare it to a cross between Roger Zelazny's Chronicles of Amber and Disney's animated movie Treasure Planet - with a little bit of StarGate SG1 thrown in. From a story telling point of view the first person narrative also smacked of Zelany's style in the Amber series.
Zelazny's Amber series is based on a family's ability to "Walk" between multiple, parallel, worlds - each only marginally different than the other - and that span a spectrum from one extreme to another. Zelazny's universe transitons from Order to Chaos, vs. Gaiman and Reaves' Binary to HEX. The notion of "walking" between these worlds in both universes is pretty coincidental too, however I'll agree that the mechanisms the characters employ to do so are different.
Disney's Treasure Planet - with it's space faring pirate ship and crew would not alone have been enough for me to make a comparison, but with both protagonists having an amorphous, floating, blob following them around it really clinched it for me.
Overall it's a fun book, and I would enjoy reading more chapters in the adventures of Joey Harker.
Book Review: Gaiman at work.
Summary: 3 Stars
Interworld seems to be Gaiman branching out into another realm of writing though we see him quite familiar with the magical and mystical his application of science and scientific theory left this story lacking. Excellent work yet left me wondering where the magic had gone, which is a primary reason that I enjoy Neil Gaiman's work.Book Review: Teen Titans save the Worlds
Summary: 3 Stars
Make no mistake, I'm a keen Neil Gaiman fan - happily lapping up his children's books like 'M is For Magic' when I run out of his more adult works to read, but this novel failed to impress me, even with its cinematic leanings.
It starts promisingly enough, introducing us to a literal average Joe(y Harker) the kind of boy who gets lost in his own house. This provides quite a nice contrast to a power he wields which he discovers quite by accident when he wanders into the Interworld...
From that point on, the story degenerates into run-of-the-mill Hollywood sci-fi fare with a cast of predictable allies and villains who look like they were loaned off the set of 'Hellboy' or 'X-Men'.
The moralistic fable of a boy who learns to face up to his fears to answer a higher call to save his world and countless other worlds in the Altiverse together with versions of himself in these parallel dimensions should appeal to a young reader.
However to this overaged reader, lines like 'All I could think of was that scene from a hundred different horror movies, in which someone who's been possessed has a moment of sanity and pleads, "Kill Me!" ' give me the goosebumps, and not of the nice variety.
Book Review: The creativity without the expected elegance
Summary: 4 Stars
I will start by iterating that I love Gaiman. So I am a little biased toward expecting this to be a good book; and it was a good book. The concepts were amazing, the plot packed full and fast-paced. The writing was not as amazing as it could have been though. I expect some level of elegance in a Gaiman book and this elegance was intermittent in this book.
Joey is wandering town for a school project when he ends up somewhere else. He knows the people but they don't recognize him and somehow all of the people are a bit different from how they should be. Then a man in a silver mask shows up to rescue Joey from this other place, that is until Joey is taken captive by an evil Sorceress. Soon Joey finds out he a Walker and can Walk between different versions of Earth. He finds himself in the organization of Interworld; and organization dedicated to keeping balance between the Hex (magic world) and the Binary (science world).
This book is a very creative concept. I loved the idea of Science Fiction and Fantasy lying on opposite ends of the spectrum and the idea of a multitude of Earth's being at different points of the spectrum. There were a lot of great ideas in here and great characters. Unfortunately the novel is very short, and while an amazing amount of plot is efficiently covered in this small space, not enough time was given to some of Joey's more interesting counterparts.
I agree with other reviewers that this book was not in the typical Gaiman style of writing. There is a lot of techno-babble thrown in the book, and while some of the quantum theory explanations are interesting, mostly they seem contrived and they take away from the elegance of the story. Gaiman is a top-notch story teller and while his creativity was present in this book, his polish was not.
Still I really enjoyed the story and would love to read more about these characters and about Joey's adventures Walking between alternate realities.
More InterWorld reviews:
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