The Silver Dream: The stakes get even higher

The Silver Dream by Neil Gaiman & Michael Reaves & Mallory Reaves

This review will contain spoilers for the first INTERWORLD book, InterWorld. You should read InterWorld (2007) before beginning The Silver Dream (2013).

Joey Harker, the Walker, is now almost 17 years old and he has so far survived as a member of the InterWorld, the military organization made up of all the Joeys in the altiverses who have come together to protect their earths from the Hex and the Binary. On one of their missions, they somehow manage to bring back a stowaway when they return to their secret base. It’s a girl named Acacia Jones and she has a supernatural power, too. While the Joeys can walk through different spatial dimensions, Acacia can walk through time. She’s a handy ally to have, but Joey isn’t sure whether she can be trusted. There are definitely some secrets being kept and Joey wants to figure out what they are.

The Interworld has some tough missions to carry out in The Silver Dream and there will be the loss of some team members, causing Joey to again suffer survivor’s guilt. They will encounter some new enemies that threaten Joey’s earth where his family lives. The stakes are as high as stakes can get and the story isn’t over. The final book is called Eternity’s Dream.

As I mentioned in my review of InterWorld, I love that this series teaches kids a little something about physics concepts. In The Silver Dream they’ll learn a bit about dimensions, universes, the electromagnetic spectrum, and their senses among other things.

The first INTERWORLD book claimed that Neil Gaiman and Michael Reaves were the co-authors. The Silver Dream says “story by Neil Gaiman and Michael Reaves… written by Michael Reaves and Mallory Reaves.” I did not investigate, but this seems to mean that the Reaves have taken over the writing of the series after the first book. Surprisingly, I did not detect any difference in writing style between the three volumes (I’ve already read the third book and will review it separately). I have a feeling that the idea and general plot was created by Gaiman and Michael Reaves, and that the Reaves wrote all three books. I can’t sense Gaiman in the prose, but that’s fine. It’s well-written if not quite up to Gaiman’s usual eloquence. I chalked this up to its YA target audience and the fact that they wrote this story (or so I have heard) with the screen in mind. I don’t know any of this for sure, though. I listened to the HarperAudio version which is perfectly narrated by Christopher Evan Welch.