Gaiman, Neil and Michael Reaves - Interworld

Sometimes I read a book, and it feels as though the author has decided to write in the style of some other author. For example, Thursday's Children, which tells the story of sister-brother ballet students Crystal and Doone Penny, reads as though author Rumer Godden had decided to write a la Noel Streatfield, author of Ballet Shoes and other children's classics about children in the performing arts. Similarly, Interworld reads as though Gaiman and Reaves had decided to write a Diana Wynne Jones science fiction/fantasy novel, somewhat in the mold of both The Homeward Bounders and Deep Secret, with perhaps a bit of A Tale of Time City thrown in. It's not as good a book as those first two, and isn't really as good as Gaiman's own Coraline, either, but it's a pleasant enough read. However, it has some strange similarities to other things I've read.

The hero and first-person narrator of Interworld is the decidedly unheroic young Joey Harker of Greenville, who describes himself as "the kid who could get lost going to the corner mailbox." When an eccentric Social Studies teacher sends Joey and his fellow students out on an exercise in which small teams are dropped off at random locations around town and told to find their way to various checkpoints - without the use of maps - Joey figures his goose is cooked. And because his team includes the girl he fancies, he imagines he's going to be humiliated, as well. So it's not too surprising that he is soon telling the object of his affections to wait a moment while he checks out the next turning, and running ahead .... through a bank of mist. On the other side is a McDonald's - with a green tartan arch. No, Joey isn't in Greenville anymore. Soon the kid who could get lost in his own house is skipping across dimensions from world to world. It turns out that Joey is a Walker, and as such, he's in danger from representatives of two opposing evil forces, representing the extremes of magic and technology, who exploit Walkers for their ability to travel from world to world. But the Walkers from the various worlds have banded together to fight the HEX and the Binary forces, and Joey soon finds himself training for exotic missions with ... multiple versions of himself.

( Read on - spoilers! )