By Neil Gaiman, and Michael Reaves, published by Harper Collins.

Goodreads synopsis: 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 makes the only possible choice: to join an army of his own, an army of versions of himself from different dimensions who all share his amazing power and who are all determined to fight to save the worlds.

My review: I was so excited to start this! I’ve never, unfortunately, read anything by Michael Reaves before, and also this was a title I’d never head of before by one of my favourite authors, Neil Gaiman. I jumped at the chance to review it for it’s re-publication with the sequel. As soon as I picked it up, I knew I was in for a sci-fi, wild adventure. Neil Gaiman writes amazing stuff, and I did some research and found out that Michael Reaves worked on some Stars Wars books. So, I got really really excited.

The beginning intrigued me a lot, which pulled me in. The story went straight into the life of this average boy, who gets lost in his own house. I laughed right away, and instantly connected with the protagonist through the detailed narrative. Throughout the book I could understand the protagonist, Joey Harker, the boy who’s Walked into being a hero by accident. He was pretty heroic and self-dependant, too, which was really great. Also, he had a well-developed background. There were tiny details about him that just made him so real, and he had realistic family and school lives too.

The start of the story was really enjoyable. Joey Harker goes home to find alternate versions of his family living in his house, who don’t know who he is, and goes to school to find out that apparently he drowned and died a while ago. Then, he falls through a portal. Then, he lands in a scary place with an alien stranger. It was so fun to read! I literally couldn’t stop. The story was beginning to fill my head with questions; Why is there a different family in his home? Why did he drown? What gave him the ability to Walk into alternate universes? It was scientifically interesting (maybe that’s just because I’m a science nerd though), as well as gripping. The story was definitely packed with much emotion, too, as there’s the death of a newly introduced, instantly likeable character, not even a quarter in.

The pace picked up even more as Joey went through this fantastical adventure, involving space-pirate-aliens and other Joey’s from alternative, parallel universes. I really liked the idea for the story, what with all of the parallel Joey’s under slightly different names (from just Joe to crazy sounding ones beginning with a J). I thought it was a very original idea, having alternate Joey’s be heroes for every universe. It was really well pulled off, too. However, just past the middle, so many character were being introduced and so many things were being explained and I just started to get a little overwhelmed. I mentioned the pace picking up a minute ago, didn’t I? Well, it got very fast. I think that I could have enjoyed the story even more than I originally did if the book had been dragged out a little; lengthened out so not that much info was being dumped on me at once, and also to give the plot a bit more time to develop. The ending was totally brilliant, though, with Joey’s heroic actions saving the day for his new friends and for the souls they freed.

Overall, INTERWORLD was a really fun read, great for sci-fi fans, fantasy fans, and fans of Neil Gaiman. For some reason, this  didn’t seem to be publicized that much upon its first release, (I’d never heard of it, and I thought I’d heard of every title by Gaiman) so I’m really hoping more fans of both Reaves and Gaiman will be discovering it now, along with the brand new sequel.  Although it’s pretty short at not even three-hundred pages, the story really packs a punch with it’s original and imaginative story-line and kick-butt main character. The ending really made me want to read the sequel, too! It seems the different variations of Joey have formed some kind of superhero team. I wanna read their next adventure now!

My Goodreads rating: 4/5!

I received INTERWORLD from the publisher, in exchange for a review.