Interworld

A while ago, I complained about books that reduce the multiverse to a subplot. And now comes Neil Gaiman's new book, which does nothing of the sort. Huzzah!

Interworld, actually coauthored by Gaiman and Michael Reaves, is a young adult novel about a young man who discovers his power to travel between parallel universes. This immediately sweeps him up into the power politics of two interdimensional empires; and of a resistance movement composed entirely of parallel versions of himself.

The cosmology is well-developed and interesting. The concept of an organization made up entirely of alternate selves is fun, but doesn't get as much development as it deserves.

(It's easy enough to see a parallel in close cases: "He's what I would be if I'd grown up in Georgia," for example. But what does it mean to say, "He's what I would be if the human race had evolved from birds"? Can that person be considered a parallel self, or just a person that coincidentally resembles you?)

The book is fun, and you can see bits of Gaimanesque thinking throughout it.