I've read plenty of implausible stories that nevertheless work. Space Travel, giant woodchucks, and really bizarre unexplained science are fine--but you've got to pull off a story I care about. And I don't care about this one. I didn't much like or connect with any of the characters--they were neither so strange as to be satirical caricatures nor were they so normal as to be like real people. The author's writing is really painful along the telling rather than showing line and given that the story was set in realistic NYC, the sheer unreality of the adventure just didn't work. I didn't buy it, I didn't care and I skimmed through to the finish less than satisfied with the whole thing.

Crazy tall tales like this usually work best outside a "real" setting. Like Stanley in Holes, or the little town of ChewandSwallow from Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs. Also, it helps to have characters we care about. When Gregor is sucked into the mysterious Underland in Greogor the Overlander, we already feel for the kid who's lost his dad and has to protect his baby sister. I never feel anything for these characters and am left with the sense that the adults are a bunch of idiots without any real power or sense.

I had hoped this would be fun, but it just couldn't pull me in.