The Path Between Worlds by Paul Antony Jones is a fantasy/science fiction mix, and the beginning of a trilogy. I enjoyed it so I have now read all three books and am pleased that the author keeps up the standard for the full set and brings things to a satisfactory conclusion. This reads very much as a Young Adult book in that it is often simplistic, and there isn’t a lot of nuance or depth, but I enjoyed it anyway because the idea was good and well thought through.
Meredith, a young woman from San Francisco, is in a dark place in her life and when she thinks that everything is hopeless she decides to take her own life. When she has reached the point of no return she hears a voice asking if she wants to be saved. When she says “yes” she is transported to a new world, an island filled with other people who, she soon discovers, have also been offered the chance to live when things seemed desperate. It transpires that all these people come from different times in history and from parallel worlds where history is different. Someone, the Architect, is trying to preserve people and give them an opportunity to build a better world together.
Of course, things don’t quite go to plan. The Architect has an opponent called the Adversary who has disrupted most of the plans. He has also recruited groups of people who want dominance in this world. Meredith, despite her young age, becomes the leader of those who want to defeat the Adversary and help the Architect achieve his goal. She has a small group of people, who become her friends, who set out on a journey, in this new world, to make things better. The world that Meredith and her friends find themselves in is full of dangers and the whole group has to face many dangers. Some of them don’t make it.
This is a fun set of books which I enjoyed a lot. I thought that the ideas were clever and the characters interesting, although Meredith was quite annoying at first. The author keeps the mystery and excitement going to the end and the books are fast paced and gripping.
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