The 13th Reality

I snagged a book from LibraryThing's Early Reviewers. Ahh, the joys of free books on planes bound for Las Vegas (more on Vegas later, for now we'll stick with the book).

The book I snagged is the first in James Dashner's new series, The 13th Reality, called The Journal of Curious Letters. Atticus Higginbottom, aka Tick, receives a strange letter in the mail, which begins a series of riddle-like clues which help Tick be at a certain spot at a certain time to do a certain thing which will take him to a certain place. No plot spoilers here baby. You have to read the book yourself if you want to know.

The characters are an interesting mix of the stereotypical (the male lead is a nerdy kid with confidence issues; the female support is brainy and arrogant) and the original (the lead "bad guy" is rather eccentric with a rather interesting obsession with the color yellow; the man who brings Tick on the adventure is not the typical overprotective mentor type). While this book doesn't delve too deep into character psyche, the glimpses it does offer give the reader hope for future books in the series.

The plot is a solid foundation for rather interesting adventures, and the inclusion of quantum physics gives the author the opportunity to take the reader into a world of probable impossibilities. I just hope that Dashner uses the foundation he has built in the first book to create a more developed, more complex series.

While the series will never come close to Harry Potter or His Dark Materials status (at least in my mind), I still plan on reading the other books in the series. And who knows, maybe the author will step it up a couple notches in the rest of the books, and the series will at least manage Artemis Fowl or Lemony Snicket levels.

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