Paraworld Zero

My latest review is “Paraworld Zero” by Matthew Peterson. This is a young adult story. Simon Kent is an orphan. He’s never known his parents. He’s a 7th grader in a New York City secondary school that teaches grades 7-12. Small for his age, he gets picked on regularly by the high schoolers, especially by a fellow orphan named Butch. Simon tries to avoid the bullying, for example, by wearing glasses he doesn’t need because “nobody hits a kid with glasses.” It doesn’t work and video games are his only friend.

Simon’s life takes a turn when he learns about his mother and the amulet that she left for him. The next day his high school bullying turns violent. As Simon is running for his life, he meets Tonya, and his life is changed forever. Together they go on an adventure that he never could have imagined, as he learns of parallel universes, magic, other races, and the mysteries of other worlds.

This book follows the Harry Potter template of wizards and magic, the discovery of great wizardly power, and likely a secret destiny to be fulfilled. It combines Star Wars aspects as well, as we see space ships, laser guns, and a group that wishes to bend the ‘paraverse’ to their worldview. These are definitely all elements that a young adult would find very exciting, along with the camaraderie among Simon and the new friends me makes, some teenage crushes, and some funny scenes within the story. It’s a face-paced story with lots of action and character interaction among the kids. Tonya has hair that changes color with her moods, which is an element that I think can really draw in a child reader’s imagination. It has plenty to offer to make it an exciting page-turner for its young adult audience of around 12 or so.

This story is definitely targeted for the young adults though. While I definitely recommend it for that audience it’s not a book that is going to cross over with the adult crowd. The book is 251 pages. The plot develops very quickly without any subtlety that is going to draw in an adult reader. The story could have used at least a few more pages at the beginning to develop Simon the bullied orphan and regular kid before diving headfirst into adventure.

The plot progresses predictably. The good people seem very nice in the story, the bad people very bad, and the moral lessons of the story are painted in sharp black and white. That works well for the kids audience in delivering the message of the story but it’s going to come across as one-dimensional for an adult. I don’t think that there’s any doubt though that the book is written specifically for the young adult audience, and is not attempting to duplicate the widespread multi-audience appeal of Harry Potter.

Paraworld Zero is billed as book one. It sets a solid base for books to come. Book one set the main plot on one particular parallel world, as Simon, Tonya, and friends spent time there and had a number of adventures. We then saw a secondary plot of the politics and goings on in the overall paraverse, involving other characters who will definitely be recurring and may also become major characters. I think this formula of a primary adventure in the nearly limitless number of parallel worlds intertwined with the growing threat to the government and social structure of the universal power structure would work very well. The two aspects came suddenly and a bit jarringly together at the end of the book. I’m not sure if this was done to move the entire series in a different direction or just to provide clarification for the young audience as to what characters were of continuing importance to the plot and how they all related to one another. My personal hope is that it was the latter. The routine travel among countless parallel universes is the most exciting part of the series, along with the development of Simon. Given the large number of parallel universes that were implied it would be a shame if that idea were not used to its potential.

For the young adult audience I rate Paraworld Zero a 7.