InterWorld #01

A lad discovers that he can walk between alternate Earths—and is swept up in a war between them in this fast-paced, compulsively readable tale. Joey gets lost in his own house, but when he steps into a patch of fog and finds himself in a world where he died, a trillion Earths lie open to him—arranged in a vast arc, with an empire of science-based planes at one end and a realm where magic rules at the other. Recruited into an army of anything-but-identical Joeys gathered from many of these worlds and charged with maintaining the balance of power, Joey picks up companions both human and non as he travels the multidimensional In Between that links the sprawling "Altiverse." In this first of what could and should be many episodes, Joey finishes his basic training by doing battle with melodramatically evil magic workers Lord Dogknife and Lady Indigo. Vivid, well-imagined settings and characters compensate for weak links in the internal logic of this rousing sf/fantasy hybrid. Peters, John