Reviewed by Em Angevaare

On the cover it says ‘Story by Neil Gaiman and Michael Reaves’, but then, in smaller type: ‘Written by Michael Reaves and Mallory Reaves’. And of course, knowing that, you notice.  One of the qualities of Gaiman’s writing is that you are rarely aware of how good it is, the words just fall into place. Here, I was sometimes bothered by a choice of word, wondering ‘Is that quite what you mean?’

That said, like Interworld, its predecessor, The Silver Dream is definitely the kind of book I wish had been around when I was twelve, funny and adventurous and smart.

Joey Harker, who in the previous book discovered that he can walk between different worlds, and so met different alternative versions of himself, now lives on a dimension-shifting spaceship-cum-city called InterWorld, where he and his other selves work to fight both the magical dictatorship called HEX and a technocracy known as Binary. During a simple mission that threatens to go horribly wrong, into this world of alter egos comes Acacia ‘Don’t call me Casey’ Jones, who is definitely someone else. Acacia – this version of Acacia – is an agent for TimeWatch, and so Joey learns that there are people in the many worlds who are even cleverer than his selves, and others more evil than Binary or HEX.

From that moment onwards you stop paying attention to the writing, and the quibbles are only minor. Once, early in the story, we get to read things from Acacia’s point of view, through her journal, and that gives the impression the authors originally wanted the story to alternate between Joey and Acacia before abandoning the idea. I also believe the ending – which is more of a promise of things to follow than a conclusion – is too bleak. It’s like a crime series getting increasingly bloody or a fantasy series getting dragons in book three: in the next instalment the odds against Joey will be stretching suspension of disbelief to breaking point, and books with such a clever premise in the hands of these inventive writers don’t need that. Which doesn’t mean I’m not looking forward to the next InterWorld adventure.

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