Fifteen-year-old Darren Bennett lives in an entirely recognizable teenage world: he's obsessed with science fiction and video games, bullied by his older brother, and completely baffled by the opposite sex. On the other hand, Darren's new, socially awkward best friend, Eric Lederer, lives a life unrecognizable to everyone: Eric can't sleep, at all, ever, a revelation he shares with Darren in strictest confidence. After overcoming his shock, Darren delights in exploring Eric's anomalous condition through a series of trials involving, among other things, roofies. When a typical high school fight over a girl leads Darren to tell a stranger about Eric's bizarre secret, Darren is caught up in the kind of fight-for-your-life adventure he so often daydreams about. Combining a coming-of-age tale with science fiction, Pierson performs a nimble, satisfying balancing act, with enough drama of the day-to-day high school variety to keep the more fantastic elements in check. The result is a fast-moving narrative with an authentic, heartfelt voice, plenty of laughs and spot-on cultural references, and a raucous climax. Like any right-thinking teenager who has grown up on Star Wars and comic books, Darren knows that if there’s anything unique about you, men in suits and dark glasses will show up and take you away. This knowledge takes on a new immediacy when Darren discovers that his new best bud, Eric, has a strange, well, superpower: he literally never sleeps and never has to! The good news about this is that it gives Eric lots of time to think about TimeBlaze, the multiplatform sci-fi epic he and Darren are creating. The bad news is that what they imagine starts to become real, including, yes, a man in a suit and dark glasses! In his first novel Pierson, a member of the sketch comedy group Derrick Comedy, has written a witty coming-of-age novel with some engaging twists (anything is possible, remember). And in Darren and Eric, he has created two engaging and memorable co-conspirators and co-protagonists. --Michael Cart