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Everworld #6
Fear the Fantastic
There is a place that shouldn’t exist. But does. And there are creatures that shouldn’t exist. But do. Welcome to a land where all of your dreams and nightmares are very real—and often deadly. Welcome to Everworld.
No one knows what it’s like to be Christopher, David, April, Jalil, or even Senna. Living part of their lives in Everworld and the other in the real world. One minute they’re off to Fairy Land to recover a dragon’s stolen treasure. The next they find themselves sitting in the middle of history class. All it takes to move between the worlds is to fall asleep. And they just can’t seem to find a way to make it stop.
Now Christopher and the others find themselves at the single most powerful area in Everworld, Olympus. As in Greek gods. As in mythology. It seems that the evil alien god, Ka Anor, plans to take Olympus for himself—and Zeus isn’t having any of it. Christopher and the others know it’s not their fight. But they know ultimately they’re going to have to choose a side. And it probably won’t be Ka Anor’s…
No one knows what it’s like to be Christopher, David, April, Jalil, or even Senna. Living part of their lives in Everworld and the other in the real world. One minute they’re off to Fairy Land to recover a dragon’s stolen treasure. The next they find themselves sitting in the middle of history class. All it takes to move between the worlds is to fall asleep. And they just can’t seem to find a way to make it stop.
Now Christopher and the others find themselves at the single most powerful area in Everworld, Olympus. As in Greek gods. As in mythology. It seems that the evil alien god, Ka Anor, plans to take Olympus for himself—and Zeus isn’t having any of it. Christopher and the others know it’s not their fight. But they know ultimately they’re going to have to choose a side. And it probably won’t be Ka Anor’s…
186 pages, Paperback
First published March 1, 2000
9 people are currently reading
896 people want to read
About the author
K.A. Applegate
251 books486 followersalso published under the name Katherine Applegate
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 81 reviews
November 30, 2022
The world building is fantastic. The Hetwan setting feels properly alien and really interesting. Dionysus is pretty fun too. The plot is a bit on the weak side though.
December 3, 2015
Christopher and the gang are sent off on their second ever quest: to deliver Dionysus, god of a good time, and his companion Ganymede, a man so beautiful he makes straight guys question himself, to Zeus on Olympus. Only problem is to get to Olympus they have to pass through Ka Anor, the go eater’s territory.
It took me several weeks to read this book. I fell terribly sick and all I wanted to do was sleep, so if I wanted to get to sleep I’d read a fee pages of this and soon I’d be snoring. It was a BORING book. The descriptions were amazing and marvellous, and world building intense and understandable, but the characters are still only reacting to their surroundings, and most of those reactions seem to be filler or word padding until we get to what’s supposed to be an interesting part.
But the most interesting part in the book was when Christopher fell asleep and had to go and deal with real-life shit, like being threatened by a Nazi supremacist for not joining their little cult! Even Christopher thinks it’s ridiculous how his EverWorld life is so dangerous and on edge and every moment is a threat, but he still has to deal with shit in the real world.
Christopher’s unlikeable, but at least he recognises his own prejudices. I think he grows by the end of the novel because he has to deal with his own homosexual feelings towards Ganymede, who risks his own immortal life to save Christopher’s, and then Christopher is unable to reciprocate. It really beats Christopher up and he takes it hard that he owed his life to someone and then just let him die.
I never really got the feeling they wouldn’t achieve their quest, which was to deliver Dionysus to Zeus, and I’m glad that for once they got a soft bed and all they could eat and to rest and recover. The next book is April’s, who’s my favourite narrator, so despite how much I didn’t enjoy this book I’m still looking forward to hers.
It took me several weeks to read this book. I fell terribly sick and all I wanted to do was sleep, so if I wanted to get to sleep I’d read a fee pages of this and soon I’d be snoring. It was a BORING book. The descriptions were amazing and marvellous, and world building intense and understandable, but the characters are still only reacting to their surroundings, and most of those reactions seem to be filler or word padding until we get to what’s supposed to be an interesting part.
But the most interesting part in the book was when Christopher fell asleep and had to go and deal with real-life shit, like being threatened by a Nazi supremacist for not joining their little cult! Even Christopher thinks it’s ridiculous how his EverWorld life is so dangerous and on edge and every moment is a threat, but he still has to deal with shit in the real world.
Christopher’s unlikeable, but at least he recognises his own prejudices. I think he grows by the end of the novel because he has to deal with his own homosexual feelings towards Ganymede, who risks his own immortal life to save Christopher’s, and then Christopher is unable to reciprocate. It really beats Christopher up and he takes it hard that he owed his life to someone and then just let him die.
I never really got the feeling they wouldn’t achieve their quest, which was to deliver Dionysus to Zeus, and I’m glad that for once they got a soft bed and all they could eat and to rest and recover. The next book is April’s, who’s my favourite narrator, so despite how much I didn’t enjoy this book I’m still looking forward to hers.
June 28, 2024
This....didn't age well.
April 10, 2010
So far for me, this has been the weakest book in the series. I still read it very quickly, but it wasn't as exciting. Yes, there was immense danger at every corner, but the majority of the book involved running from the Hetwan. Run run run, almost die, run run run, meet a Greek god, run run run.
This story is told from Christopher's point of view. Christopher is one of my favorite characters; he's witty, extremely cynical and very jaded. So hearing his thoughts is always entertaining.
I won't give away any spoilers, but there are certain events that occur at the end of the book that really help one understand Christopher's character a bit more. It makes him a bit more likable.
I'd rate this book three stars. It was okay, but not quite as exciting as the other books. Dionysus is a funny characters, though...and his banter helps bring some laughter to the story.
This story is told from Christopher's point of view. Christopher is one of my favorite characters; he's witty, extremely cynical and very jaded. So hearing his thoughts is always entertaining.
I won't give away any spoilers, but there are certain events that occur at the end of the book that really help one understand Christopher's character a bit more. It makes him a bit more likable.
I'd rate this book three stars. It was okay, but not quite as exciting as the other books. Dionysus is a funny characters, though...and his banter helps bring some laughter to the story.
January 27, 2022
Plot: Four teenagers trapped in parallel universe populated by God's and legends traverse across alien territory, liberating a couple of immortals in the process.
1. Expanded Plot Summary:
2. I think I've figured out how much KAA loves to create and describe alien creatures and landscapes. Hetwan country is eerily beautiful and regularly creepy and that's interesting. But it's a bit of a departure from the familiar historical setting, but with fucked up magic theme of the earlier books and I admit that threw me off a little.
3. Regardless. This is Christopher's book, and it is probably the most character-focused of the books so far. The switchbacks into the real world actively affect his characterization. Christopher is, as he points out himself, not a PC guy. He's here for the jokes, and if they make people uncomfortable, it's because they don't have a sense of humor. You can see active resentment bubble up to the surface every time one of the others snap and call him out on his bigotry. You are also in Christopher's head, so you know he respects all of the others and doesn't think they are lesser than him. He manages to separate bigoted jokes from actual bigotry, because he has that luxury.
4. It's kindof a frustrating trait in a character, so it was a delight to see how Christopher slowly starts to figure out he might not be entirely in the right so far. How he goes from angrily accepting the accusation of him having a full set to take out his bigotry on (a Jew, a black guy, a woman and a gay guy) and going "not my problem I don't see it" when he works at a place that prints out Neo Nazi leaflets to wondering if others see something in him he can't see, if people like Keith are drawn to him? That is excellent.
5. It also makes me wonder. Would Christopher have joined the Neo-Nazis if he hadn't been stuck in Everworld putting his lives in the hands of the kind of people he usually avoids? I think there's a realization probability he would have. Radicalization preys on the dissatisfied, the listless. Christopher is a kid in a house filled with alcoholics and arguments, and he's pretty disinterested by the kind of life that he knows awaits him.
6. The whole Ganymede sequence was wonderfully written. Being in Christopher's stream-of-conciousness head while he deals with it is emotionally ravaging. It's brutal and it's lovely and it's my favorite sequence in these books to date.
7. So anyway out characters are shaping up to be more multi dimensional and our conflict is getting more immediate. Hopefully Olympus has some answers (haha) so away we go~
1. Expanded Plot Summary:
2. I think I've figured out how much KAA loves to create and describe alien creatures and landscapes. Hetwan country is eerily beautiful and regularly creepy and that's interesting. But it's a bit of a departure from the familiar historical setting, but with fucked up magic theme of the earlier books and I admit that threw me off a little.
3. Regardless. This is Christopher's book, and it is probably the most character-focused of the books so far. The switchbacks into the real world actively affect his characterization. Christopher is, as he points out himself, not a PC guy. He's here for the jokes, and if they make people uncomfortable, it's because they don't have a sense of humor. You can see active resentment bubble up to the surface every time one of the others snap and call him out on his bigotry. You are also in Christopher's head, so you know he respects all of the others and doesn't think they are lesser than him. He manages to separate bigoted jokes from actual bigotry, because he has that luxury.
4. It's kindof a frustrating trait in a character, so it was a delight to see how Christopher slowly starts to figure out he might not be entirely in the right so far. How he goes from angrily accepting the accusation of him having a full set to take out his bigotry on (a Jew, a black guy, a woman and a gay guy) and going "not my problem I don't see it" when he works at a place that prints out Neo Nazi leaflets to wondering if others see something in him he can't see, if people like Keith are drawn to him? That is excellent.
5. It also makes me wonder. Would Christopher have joined the Neo-Nazis if he hadn't been stuck in Everworld putting his lives in the hands of the kind of people he usually avoids? I think there's a realization probability he would have. Radicalization preys on the dissatisfied, the listless. Christopher is a kid in a house filled with alcoholics and arguments, and he's pretty disinterested by the kind of life that he knows awaits him.
6. The whole Ganymede sequence was wonderfully written. Being in Christopher's stream-of-conciousness head while he deals with it is emotionally ravaging. It's brutal and it's lovely and it's my favorite sequence in these books to date.
7. So anyway out characters are shaping up to be more multi dimensional and our conflict is getting more immediate. Hopefully Olympus has some answers (haha) so away we go~
August 26, 2019
If Jalil is the most sympathetic member of this group, then Christopher is probably the most despicable. He not only displays every kind of bigotry imaginable, he seems to be categorically incapable of keeping it to himself, which given that he's stuck in a dangerous world that doesn't give two shits about his survival and the only other people he can rely on consist of a black man, a Jew, and a woman, doesn't say much for his sense of self-preservation:
He mentally trashes April for being "shallow", and granted, the degree to which she's smitten with Ganymede is pretty shallow. His argument rings pretty hollow, however, when 1) he has absolutely no problem with guys being shallow in their romantic pursuits and it's only a bad thing when women do it, and 2) it's clear that his real problem with the situation is that April is looking at Ganymede rather than him:
So just give it a few more decades, and you can bet that Christopher will be in deep with the Incel community, because it's far easier for him to blame women for snubbing him than to actually put in any effort to make himself less repulsive to women.
As if that isn't enough, he's homophobic too:
And of course, whenever he does cross the line and makes a blatantly racist or anti-Semitic joke, of course that's everyone else's problem for being offended rather than his for being offensive:
So yeah, Christopher is a bigoted little shit who... actually got a surprising amount of character insight. He kept looking the other way at his boss and his coworkers' neo-Nazi affiliations, only to promptly get in way over his head. More compelling was the relationship he built up with Ganymede,
More than that, though, we finally got to spend some time in Hetwan country! Aside from the utterly unlikeable protagonists, one of my biggest complaints about this series is that the portrayal of the pantheons and cultures tends to come across as oversimplified, and reflects more of our own cultural prejudices than it does the historical reality. I talked in my reviews of the previous books about the portrayal of the Vikings as unwashed barbarians, the Aztecs as bloodthirsty savages, and Hel as a man-eating sadist, and that trend continues here with Dionysus, whose portrayal seemed to be drawn more from Fantasia than from actual Greek mythology.
You know, the obese, drunk idiot who can't stop drowning himself in wine even when he's literally getting hit by lightning.
And I know Greek mythology hasn't always been my favorite, but I still feel compelled to defend it here, because the mythological Dionysus was one badass god. You know, the one whose revels people ran away from in terror due to his followers' tendency to tear random bystanders to pieces with their bare hands. The one who punished women who were too prudish to come out and party with him by turning them into bats. And while I would expect this degree of oversimplified cutesifying from Disney, I certainly did not expect it from K. A. Applegate.
So yeah, even despite (or perhaps because of) the unrelenting horror, the foray into Hetwan territory was a much-needed breath of fresh air. Applegate has always been at her very best when worldbuilding her own original alien cultures as opposed to her attempts to explore preexisting historical ones, which always come across as just a little bit off. It wasn't just the horror, either, but the unexpected beauty of the rural areas filled with singing trees. It was the fact that that beauty could turn deadly at a moment's notice, because the protagonists know exactly nothing about this world's ecology and don't have the first clue what's a completely harmless everyday occurrence and what constitutes a deadly warning sign. We got to see a Hetwan mating ritual (which, unsurprisingly, looks very, very different from human sex), we got a glimpse of the Hetwan social and religious structure, and we finally got to see Ka Anor.
Also, whatever our protagonists might have thought of them, the Hetwan themselves came across not as evil or actively malicious, but rather as incomprehensible. So far we've only gotten glimpses of what they do, but still know practically nothing about why. (Not to mention I have a very strong suspicion, based mostly on the Hetwans' insectoid characteristics, that Ka Anor is in fact a "she", as are all of the rank and file Hetwan that we see, and that the "flying gut-bags" are actually the males of the species rather than the females as everyone automatically assumed.) See, I want a bit more of this.
"Damn it, Christopher, can you just cut out that crap? I mean, what are you, just stupid? You're here in the deep weeds with a black man and a Jew, and you're a racist, an anti-Semite? How smart is that?"
He mentally trashes April for being "shallow", and granted, the degree to which she's smitten with Ganymede is pretty shallow. His argument rings pretty hollow, however, when 1) he has absolutely no problem with guys being shallow in their romantic pursuits and it's only a bad thing when women do it, and 2) it's clear that his real problem with the situation is that April is looking at Ganymede rather than him:
April had no effect on him, and frankly, I was beginning to resent her for trying so hard. What, humans weren't good enough? She had to have some long-legged, lean, muscular, sweet-natured, incredibly handsome, barely-dressed stud-muffin?
I mean, yeah, guys think that way. But I expected more of April. Whatever happened to the idea of women caring more about sense of humor and inner beauty? Ganymede had no sense of humor at all. Unlike, say, me.
So just give it a few more decades, and you can bet that Christopher will be in deep with the Incel community, because it's far easier for him to blame women for snubbing him than to actually put in any effort to make himself less repulsive to women.
As if that isn't enough, he's homophobic too:
David and I didn't always get along, but being close to David didn't bother me. Being close to Ganymede did. Not that I'm one of those guys who hates gays. I mean, to each his own, right? Just not around me. That's all I'm saying.
And of course, whenever he does cross the line and makes a blatantly racist or anti-Semitic joke, of course that's everyone else's problem for being offended rather than his for being offensive:
I still wanted to call a time-out to return Jalil's punch. I was still pissed at him. I mean, I tried to get along with Jalil, but any little joke and I was the bad guy all of a sudden.
So yeah, Christopher is a bigoted little shit who... actually got a surprising amount of character insight. He kept looking the other way at his boss and his coworkers' neo-Nazi affiliations, only to promptly get in way over his head. More compelling was the relationship he built up with Ganymede,
More than that, though, we finally got to spend some time in Hetwan country! Aside from the utterly unlikeable protagonists, one of my biggest complaints about this series is that the portrayal of the pantheons and cultures tends to come across as oversimplified, and reflects more of our own cultural prejudices than it does the historical reality. I talked in my reviews of the previous books about the portrayal of the Vikings as unwashed barbarians, the Aztecs as bloodthirsty savages, and Hel as a man-eating sadist, and that trend continues here with Dionysus, whose portrayal seemed to be drawn more from Fantasia than from actual Greek mythology.
You know, the obese, drunk idiot who can't stop drowning himself in wine even when he's literally getting hit by lightning.
And I know Greek mythology hasn't always been my favorite, but I still feel compelled to defend it here, because the mythological Dionysus was one badass god. You know, the one whose revels people ran away from in terror due to his followers' tendency to tear random bystanders to pieces with their bare hands. The one who punished women who were too prudish to come out and party with him by turning them into bats. And while I would expect this degree of oversimplified cutesifying from Disney, I certainly did not expect it from K. A. Applegate.
So yeah, even despite (or perhaps because of) the unrelenting horror, the foray into Hetwan territory was a much-needed breath of fresh air. Applegate has always been at her very best when worldbuilding her own original alien cultures as opposed to her attempts to explore preexisting historical ones, which always come across as just a little bit off. It wasn't just the horror, either, but the unexpected beauty of the rural areas filled with singing trees. It was the fact that that beauty could turn deadly at a moment's notice, because the protagonists know exactly nothing about this world's ecology and don't have the first clue what's a completely harmless everyday occurrence and what constitutes a deadly warning sign. We got to see a Hetwan mating ritual (which, unsurprisingly, looks very, very different from human sex), we got a glimpse of the Hetwan social and religious structure, and we finally got to see Ka Anor.
Also, whatever our protagonists might have thought of them, the Hetwan themselves came across not as evil or actively malicious, but rather as incomprehensible. So far we've only gotten glimpses of what they do, but still know practically nothing about why. (Not to mention I have a very strong suspicion, based mostly on the Hetwans' insectoid characteristics, that Ka Anor is in fact a "she", as are all of the rank and file Hetwan that we see, and that the "flying gut-bags" are actually the males of the species rather than the females as everyone automatically assumed.) See, I want a bit more of this.
October 25, 2021
If this is supposed to be the beginning of Christopher’s redemption arc, it’s a crummy start. I initially rated this 3 stars but as I thought more about it the more irritated I am by the whole thing.
This is another Christopher-narrated book and he’s the least enjoyable character to spend time with. As per usual, he’s racist, sexist, and in this installment he gets to exhibit a new side: homophobic. The group gets thrown in with the slovenly god Dionysus and his yes-man Ganymede. Ganymede, it seems, is gay; that makes Chris extremely uncomfortable. Hey, he says, I don’t care what you do in the privacy of your own home… just don’t walk too close to me or else your gayness might rub off on me.
I forget now what racist joke Christopher made in this book and then got into a fistfight with Jalil after, but the others are calling him out more and more for it. David repeatedly tells him to cut it out but Chris acts like he’s the aggrieved party. Meanwhile in the “real world” he gets a job at a copy shop very clearly run by a mainstream Republican—that is to say, a neo-Nazi white supremacist. He rolls his eyes at this but it isn’t enough to turn him away from the job, even as he spends his days collating ranting manifestos about the Zionist takeover and shit like that. By the way, this is completely off-topic but despite the occasional swearing in these books apparently “shit” is completely out of bounds. The term that gets used instead is “product”. We’re in deep product! Oh, that’s bull product! It’s unbelievably stupid: just say the real word, for fuck’s sake, we all know what it is. You’re not going to shock our sensitive YA ears. It’s goddamn ridiculous.
Anyway, here’s what happens with Christopher. Let’s start with “real world” Chris. His boss and coworkers try to initiate him into their political action committee and he bravely says “I totally respect what you guys believe in but I gotta get home now.” This is tantamount to a declaration of war, apparently, because now they’re leaving threatening messages at his home. I guess this is supposed to read as some grand step forward for Christopher, politely bowing out of a fucking Neo-Nazi work group? My god, what a low bar he’s set for himself. And beyond the complete lack of actual self-reflection in Chris’ supposed growth, this whole B-story is exactly two scenes: when he gets the job and when he leaves the job. There’s no build-up, no growing unease, nothing. It’s just not satisfying narratively, even before the problem of Christopher mainly disliking his coworkers because they are “losers” rather than because he is disturbed by their beliefs. He later has a moment of self-doubt where he wonders if he *is* like the guys at the copy shop, but not because he realizes he harbors similar prejudices—he only thinks maybe he’s a loser too.
Meanwhile, Everworld Chris is freaked out by Ganymede and at one point he even refers to the half-god as a “fag”. But! During a battle with Hetwans in the air, Ganymede puts himself in danger to save Christopher. Later, Chris gets the opportunity to return the favor… and bolts, leaving Ganymede to be captured and eaten by Ka Anor. This is again somewhat tangential but I have to say I was glad to finally be introduced to Ka Anor, who lives up to the foreboding that preceded his entrance, but Ganymede’s death scene oddly doesn’t carry the weight it was meant to. It does not match the horrors seen in Hel’s lair.
Anyway, Christopher feels guilty about leaving Ganymede behind and letting him get devoured by the god-eater. There’s a suggestion, not made explicit, that part of the reason he was willing to leave Ganymede behind is his homophobia. Of course, Chris can’t just sit with that himself—he has to point out that David had a similar thought. “See?” he strains, “It’s not just me!” Nevertheless, Ganymede’s death, which Christopher feels somewhat responsible for, is another… turning point… for him? I guess that’s what we’re supposed to take away from it. Again, not really directly confronting his racism or homophobia, not actively admitting his wrongness, not vocally acknowledging his error, but through some slight regret he feels we’re expected to view him as a “changed man”. I’m sorry but fuck that. Christopher still has a long way to go to clean his soul and this doesn’t even scratch the surface.
Maybe you could argue that it’s *more realistic* this way. Don’t people who climb out of bigoted holes like this do so slowly, rather then suddenly denouncing everything they previously believed? Perhaps, but it still feels too much like he’s not really trying or learning. I admit I’ve started the next book, GATEWAY TO THE GODS, at the time I’m writing this and early on there’s a scene where Chris makes an *unbelievably* racist joke (that Jalil ought to be calling David “massa” because Jalil thinks David is good at giving orders) but then becomes shame-faced and apologizes for the joke instead of angrily insisting, “I’m funny! Stop being so sensitive!! This is cancel culture!!!” The implication is that whatever happened to him in the last book—Ganymede’s death in particular—has shaken him out of his habitual racism, at least enough to know (sometimes) when he’s crossed a line. But this book *does not* earn that change. Yet I saw SEVERAL reviews here on GoodReads talking about how this entry deepens Christopher’s character and/or makes him more likable. No, it doesn’t. Not at all.
As for the rest, it’s a trip through Hetwan airspace. This world is kind of neat, and I’m not one who is annoyed by Dionysus. Apparently some people are, again, judging by a handful of GoodReads reviews. That’s why I initially thought 3 stars. The “plot” of the book is decent. There’s thrilling escape after thrilling escape, sword fights and air battles and hiding in plain sight waiting for the other shoe to drop, and then it culminates in our first view of Ka Anor. All that is great, or if not great then at least good. But it’s hard to appreciate that when Christopher’s personal issues are so extreme, and so poorly handled. This thread has repeatedly threatened to bring down EVERWORLD, as a series, and it’s at its worst here.
This is another Christopher-narrated book and he’s the least enjoyable character to spend time with. As per usual, he’s racist, sexist, and in this installment he gets to exhibit a new side: homophobic. The group gets thrown in with the slovenly god Dionysus and his yes-man Ganymede. Ganymede, it seems, is gay; that makes Chris extremely uncomfortable. Hey, he says, I don’t care what you do in the privacy of your own home… just don’t walk too close to me or else your gayness might rub off on me.
I forget now what racist joke Christopher made in this book and then got into a fistfight with Jalil after, but the others are calling him out more and more for it. David repeatedly tells him to cut it out but Chris acts like he’s the aggrieved party. Meanwhile in the “real world” he gets a job at a copy shop very clearly run by a mainstream Republican—that is to say, a neo-Nazi white supremacist. He rolls his eyes at this but it isn’t enough to turn him away from the job, even as he spends his days collating ranting manifestos about the Zionist takeover and shit like that. By the way, this is completely off-topic but despite the occasional swearing in these books apparently “shit” is completely out of bounds. The term that gets used instead is “product”. We’re in deep product! Oh, that’s bull product! It’s unbelievably stupid: just say the real word, for fuck’s sake, we all know what it is. You’re not going to shock our sensitive YA ears. It’s goddamn ridiculous.
Anyway, here’s what happens with Christopher. Let’s start with “real world” Chris. His boss and coworkers try to initiate him into their political action committee and he bravely says “I totally respect what you guys believe in but I gotta get home now.” This is tantamount to a declaration of war, apparently, because now they’re leaving threatening messages at his home. I guess this is supposed to read as some grand step forward for Christopher, politely bowing out of a fucking Neo-Nazi work group? My god, what a low bar he’s set for himself. And beyond the complete lack of actual self-reflection in Chris’ supposed growth, this whole B-story is exactly two scenes: when he gets the job and when he leaves the job. There’s no build-up, no growing unease, nothing. It’s just not satisfying narratively, even before the problem of Christopher mainly disliking his coworkers because they are “losers” rather than because he is disturbed by their beliefs. He later has a moment of self-doubt where he wonders if he *is* like the guys at the copy shop, but not because he realizes he harbors similar prejudices—he only thinks maybe he’s a loser too.
Meanwhile, Everworld Chris is freaked out by Ganymede and at one point he even refers to the half-god as a “fag”. But! During a battle with Hetwans in the air, Ganymede puts himself in danger to save Christopher. Later, Chris gets the opportunity to return the favor… and bolts, leaving Ganymede to be captured and eaten by Ka Anor. This is again somewhat tangential but I have to say I was glad to finally be introduced to Ka Anor, who lives up to the foreboding that preceded his entrance, but Ganymede’s death scene oddly doesn’t carry the weight it was meant to. It does not match the horrors seen in Hel’s lair.
Anyway, Christopher feels guilty about leaving Ganymede behind and letting him get devoured by the god-eater. There’s a suggestion, not made explicit, that part of the reason he was willing to leave Ganymede behind is his homophobia. Of course, Chris can’t just sit with that himself—he has to point out that David had a similar thought. “See?” he strains, “It’s not just me!” Nevertheless, Ganymede’s death, which Christopher feels somewhat responsible for, is another… turning point… for him? I guess that’s what we’re supposed to take away from it. Again, not really directly confronting his racism or homophobia, not actively admitting his wrongness, not vocally acknowledging his error, but through some slight regret he feels we’re expected to view him as a “changed man”. I’m sorry but fuck that. Christopher still has a long way to go to clean his soul and this doesn’t even scratch the surface.
Maybe you could argue that it’s *more realistic* this way. Don’t people who climb out of bigoted holes like this do so slowly, rather then suddenly denouncing everything they previously believed? Perhaps, but it still feels too much like he’s not really trying or learning. I admit I’ve started the next book, GATEWAY TO THE GODS, at the time I’m writing this and early on there’s a scene where Chris makes an *unbelievably* racist joke (that Jalil ought to be calling David “massa” because Jalil thinks David is good at giving orders) but then becomes shame-faced and apologizes for the joke instead of angrily insisting, “I’m funny! Stop being so sensitive!! This is cancel culture!!!” The implication is that whatever happened to him in the last book—Ganymede’s death in particular—has shaken him out of his habitual racism, at least enough to know (sometimes) when he’s crossed a line. But this book *does not* earn that change. Yet I saw SEVERAL reviews here on GoodReads talking about how this entry deepens Christopher’s character and/or makes him more likable. No, it doesn’t. Not at all.
As for the rest, it’s a trip through Hetwan airspace. This world is kind of neat, and I’m not one who is annoyed by Dionysus. Apparently some people are, again, judging by a handful of GoodReads reviews. That’s why I initially thought 3 stars. The “plot” of the book is decent. There’s thrilling escape after thrilling escape, sword fights and air battles and hiding in plain sight waiting for the other shoe to drop, and then it culminates in our first view of Ka Anor. All that is great, or if not great then at least good. But it’s hard to appreciate that when Christopher’s personal issues are so extreme, and so poorly handled. This thread has repeatedly threatened to bring down EVERWORLD, as a series, and it’s at its worst here.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
June 9, 2021
2.5 stars. The cast joins Dionysus's troupe while traveling through Hetwan territory. The setting is great fun--inventive, strange, and alien, with a Seussian landscape and grotesque biology; again, very much what I'd hope for from the Animorphs authors writing for an older audience. Unfortunately, Dionysus is everything I feared could go wrong with gods as present characters. He's a clumsy god of drunkenness, slight, shallow, with a hollow theatricality and entirely absent any divine madness; boring and frustrating. Christopher is also a frustrating PoV character, because while he's growing more complex and his flaws are realistic, I nonetheless don't prefer to spend an entire book with "average young white guy starts to confront some of his prejudice." So a weaker book on the whole, but bad in the way this series defaults to: readable brain-candy, but flawed.
April 9, 2025
There are parts of this book that I remember VERY clearly from the first time I read it (Christopher's reaction to Ganyemede, everything with Dionysus) and parts that felt completely new to me (everything with the Hetwan/Ka Anor), so reading this was a nice mix of nostalgia and surprise. Ultimately, Christopher is my least favorite point of view character in the series, but this book in particular is very aware of how awful he is and sets up a believable trajectory for him to start questioning his biases and bigotries and realizing he doesn't want to be the kind of person who .
September 17, 2020
This book is told from Christopher's perspective, and I stand by what I said in a review for a previous book. Christopher is way more likeable, or if not likeable then at least tolerable, when he isn't the one narrating.
So let me start off by talking about that.
The narrator
I had hopes for him in recent books. Hopes that he was growing as a person. But he's growing too slow. He's still a bigot. Not only does he rant about how he didn't want to work in fast food because black people and Mexicans work there, but he agrees to work at a copy place where this exchange with the manager happens:
“What kind of a name is Hitchcock?”
“Uh…I don’t know.”
“Your people. Where are they from?”
I shrugged. “My dad’s from Nebraska. My mom’s from Naperville.”
“Hitchcock. That wasn’t changed from anything, was it? Like, you know, Americanized?”
I was about a millimetre away from saying, “Yeah, we changed it from Kwan Lee Ho, can’t you tell?” but I didn’t. I just said, “No. I don’t think so.”
He nodded. “You can’t be too careful. I mean, this is still America. But it’s not all America. You know what I mean.”
Honestly, if I'd heard that, I would have taken back the application, said "thanks but no thanks", and left. Yet Christopher stays on, and turns a blind eye to the neo-nazi propaganda his boss makes him photocopy. Really Christopher? Really??
Christopher does stupid things in this book. Makes racist jokes then gets mad when he gets called out on them, and starts fights. In fact he starts at least 2 fights on barely any provocation, and his childishness both times pissed me off.
He's racist, anti-semitic, sexist and in this book, homophobic as well. As April says, "now you have it all. The Bigot's Big Four."
I mean look at this:
April had no effect on him, and frankly, I was beginning to resent her for trying so hard. What, humans weren't good enough? She had to have some long-legged, lean, muscular, sweet-natured, incredibly handsome, barely-dressed stud-muffin?
I mean, yeah, guys think that way. But I expected more of April. Whatever happened to the idea of women caring more about sense of humor and inner beauty? Ganymede had no sense of humor at all. Unlike, say, me.
There's so much entitled chauvinism in those two paragraphs that I'm not even gonna bother unpacking it. I don't think I have to either. It's pretty damn clear.
The plot
Honestly there ain't much. This book reads more like a piece of travel-writing as the group makes their way through hetwan country.
What I liked
Ka Anor. This book is where we first get a glimpse of Ka Anor, and what I like about his description is its vagueness. It reminds me of how HP Lovecraft wrote about some of his most horrific monsters. He'd describe the sense of cosmic horror, but could find no appropriate words to describe what they looked like.
And if there's one thing I learned from Lovecraft, it's that the unknown can be terrifying.
Having said that, I do wish Ka Anor's introduction had had more ceremony, more impact. He is after all the big bad god-eater we've been hearing about in all the previous books. It just felt a bit anticlimactic when I did see him at last.
What I didn't like
Now a note on Dionysus. That was actually something I was disappointed with. Everworld Dionysus seemed to be very much a wasteman. A big, drunk, lump of flesh who does stupid things and needs a group of mortal teenagers to save his sorry behind. Wait what? Excuse me. Doesn't anyone remember the story of how pirates once captured Dionysus, and decided to try to ransom him because he looked like a prince. However, no rope was able to bind him, and he proceeded to wreak havoc on his captors? Makes you wonder how the hetwan managed to chain him up, eh?
Let's face it, Dionysus was not a chump in Greek mythology. And considering how true to the classics Applegate has been so far, I am surprised she went down this route.
Granted he does still have his powers of illusion, and uses this against the hetwan in a way that mirrors the story of Pentheus. You know, King of Thebes (supposedly cousin to Dionysus if I remember my myths), who tried to stop people from worshipping the god? So Dionysus made the women of Thebes go mad, and think Pentheus was a wild beast. They tore him limb from limb.
Again, why did he need Christopher et al to save him?? Here's an idea: Forget conjuring up illusionary female hetwan as a distraction. Why not cast an illusion on the hetwan to make them see each other as females. Given what their mating ritual is like, that would have been the most effective way of eliminating the hetwan guards, no?
Rating
A low 3 out of 5 stars. Not as exciting as earlier books. And I know I previously said that David was my least favourite character. Let me revise that, because Christopher joined him at rock bottom, then picked up a shovel and started digging.
I do still have hopes for the redemption of his character. I just hope he won't be so much of an ass the next time his POV comes around.
So let me start off by talking about that.
The narrator
I had hopes for him in recent books. Hopes that he was growing as a person. But he's growing too slow. He's still a bigot. Not only does he rant about how he didn't want to work in fast food because black people and Mexicans work there, but he agrees to work at a copy place where this exchange with the manager happens:
“What kind of a name is Hitchcock?”
“Uh…I don’t know.”
“Your people. Where are they from?”
I shrugged. “My dad’s from Nebraska. My mom’s from Naperville.”
“Hitchcock. That wasn’t changed from anything, was it? Like, you know, Americanized?”
I was about a millimetre away from saying, “Yeah, we changed it from Kwan Lee Ho, can’t you tell?” but I didn’t. I just said, “No. I don’t think so.”
He nodded. “You can’t be too careful. I mean, this is still America. But it’s not all America. You know what I mean.”
Honestly, if I'd heard that, I would have taken back the application, said "thanks but no thanks", and left. Yet Christopher stays on, and turns a blind eye to the neo-nazi propaganda his boss makes him photocopy. Really Christopher? Really??
Christopher does stupid things in this book. Makes racist jokes then gets mad when he gets called out on them, and starts fights. In fact he starts at least 2 fights on barely any provocation, and his childishness both times pissed me off.
He's racist, anti-semitic, sexist and in this book, homophobic as well. As April says, "now you have it all. The Bigot's Big Four."
I mean look at this:
April had no effect on him, and frankly, I was beginning to resent her for trying so hard. What, humans weren't good enough? She had to have some long-legged, lean, muscular, sweet-natured, incredibly handsome, barely-dressed stud-muffin?
I mean, yeah, guys think that way. But I expected more of April. Whatever happened to the idea of women caring more about sense of humor and inner beauty? Ganymede had no sense of humor at all. Unlike, say, me.
There's so much entitled chauvinism in those two paragraphs that I'm not even gonna bother unpacking it. I don't think I have to either. It's pretty damn clear.
The plot
Honestly there ain't much. This book reads more like a piece of travel-writing as the group makes their way through hetwan country.
What I liked
Ka Anor. This book is where we first get a glimpse of Ka Anor, and what I like about his description is its vagueness. It reminds me of how HP Lovecraft wrote about some of his most horrific monsters. He'd describe the sense of cosmic horror, but could find no appropriate words to describe what they looked like.
And if there's one thing I learned from Lovecraft, it's that the unknown can be terrifying.
Having said that, I do wish Ka Anor's introduction had had more ceremony, more impact. He is after all the big bad god-eater we've been hearing about in all the previous books. It just felt a bit anticlimactic when I did see him at last.
What I didn't like
Now a note on Dionysus. That was actually something I was disappointed with. Everworld Dionysus seemed to be very much a wasteman. A big, drunk, lump of flesh who does stupid things and needs a group of mortal teenagers to save his sorry behind. Wait what? Excuse me. Doesn't anyone remember the story of how pirates once captured Dionysus, and decided to try to ransom him because he looked like a prince. However, no rope was able to bind him, and he proceeded to wreak havoc on his captors? Makes you wonder how the hetwan managed to chain him up, eh?
Let's face it, Dionysus was not a chump in Greek mythology. And considering how true to the classics Applegate has been so far, I am surprised she went down this route.
Granted he does still have his powers of illusion, and uses this against the hetwan in a way that mirrors the story of Pentheus. You know, King of Thebes (supposedly cousin to Dionysus if I remember my myths), who tried to stop people from worshipping the god? So Dionysus made the women of Thebes go mad, and think Pentheus was a wild beast. They tore him limb from limb.
Again, why did he need Christopher et al to save him?? Here's an idea: Forget conjuring up illusionary female hetwan as a distraction. Why not cast an illusion on the hetwan to make them see each other as females. Given what their mating ritual is like, that would have been the most effective way of eliminating the hetwan guards, no?
Rating
A low 3 out of 5 stars. Not as exciting as earlier books. And I know I previously said that David was my least favourite character. Let me revise that, because Christopher joined him at rock bottom, then picked up a shovel and started digging.
I do still have hopes for the redemption of his character. I just hope he won't be so much of an ass the next time his POV comes around.
May 2, 2022
Depressing as per usual.
But you still want to know what's going to happen.
But you still want to know what's going to happen.
September 13, 2010
Fear the Fantastic follows Discover the Destroyer, and more than any other installment I've read, it reminded me that this series is best read as one long book. While Dionysus appears for the first time and the four travelers get to have a bit of a fight from time to time, this book is primarily a transition book. We are simply moving from one place to the next. At the end of DtD, they have just entered the lands of Ka Anor, and FtF merely gets them to the center of the city. Now I have to wait until BookMooch or SwapTree makes it possible for me to get the next book in the series....
July 18, 2014
I have feelings. I hate books.
July 14, 2016
The Everworld kids find themselves in Hetwan country, where trees sing and giant ants will plow right over you as they harvest huge swaths of trees. Oh, then there’s running into Dionysus’ party on the way through Hetwan country to reach Mount Olympus on the far side. Welcome to Everworld, indeed!
What the last book did for revealing more about David, this book does the same for revealing more about Christopher. Except with Christopher, we are getting all current-day issues that he is going through, in Everworld and the real world. In Everworld, he’s getting chewed out by the group for his bigoted jokes, all the while also still struggling to simultaneously survive and also avoid dealing with the Everworld reality in his own way (he’s rather of in denial about the whole situation…). In the real world, he is gets a new job where the manager and even other employees are up to some really shady stuff , as well as how his home life is not exactly “stable” .While David has his past more actively haunting his present, Christopher is dealing with enough issues in his present day that you can see where his abrasive actions/statements come from. Basically, I am giving this book 4 solid stars in large part due to the deepening characterization we get of Christopher. He has more skeletons in his closet than seemed apparent from his previous book, and man are these some skeletons!
On the lighter side of this book – once again there is not a “clearly defined” plot or point, other than surviving Hetwan lands and making it to Olympus with Ganymede and Dionysus. But this meandering (literally!) of the plot gives us the chance to see the landscape and alienness of Hetwan territory (Didn’t I mention it? Giant bugs and singing trees.) – and these landscapes are pretty awesome. It is also a bit of a break to the Everworld kids that they are encountering immortals who are not interested in killing them for once, and instead are, in their own ways, even helpful . If not for all of Christopher’s character development in this book, it would have gotten 3 stars from me.
I want to unpack the exchange they have on pages 57-58 (in the quotes below), jumping off a conversation about Ganymede. First off, the reference to gays and David’s almost defense of Christopher. I can’t help but think this has to do with . Next, April calling out the boys with “you have to turn [pure beauty] into a sexual thing, a challenge to your manhood” – we as a society are still working through this predisposition and reworking new ways to be accepting without feeling any sense of being affronted. Then, I like that April brings up premarital sex – soundly trouncing the misconceptions about her sexual activities, while also giving a nod to Catholicism’s teachings on sex in general. It’s nice to be able to be able to relate to a character with these views for once – it is not pounded into our heads, but left as a subtext which shapes her actions. Finally, there’s the April/David exchange at the end about Ganymede’s butt cheeks: I don’t think April really realizes what she has stumbled upon with David. It’s another instance of how we may not talk about the things in our childhood which shaped us (, religion, etc.), but how those experiences shape our reactions as we grow. All of our reactions as we grow are framed and shaped by our prior experiences, no matter what they were, whether they were benign or harmful.
Quotes:
“What kind of a name is Hitchcock?” [the manager asked me]
“Uh… I don’t know.”
“Your people. Where are they from?”
I shrugged. “My dad’s from Nebraska. My mom’s from Naperville.”
“Hitchcock. That wasn’t changed from anything, was it? Like, you know, Americanized?”
I was about a millimeter away from saying, “Yeah, we changed it from Kwan Lee Ho, can’t you tell?” but I didn’t. I just said, “No. I don’t think so.”
He nodded. “You can’t be too careful. I mean, this is still America. But it’s not all America. You know what I mean.” – page 30 – And yet, sadly this sort of racism is still all too alive and well in Chicago and the rest of the US. Do people forget that the US as we know it is a nation made up of all different peoples from all corners of the globe? Also, this exchange just screams ‘something bad is going to happen’ if he takes this job. (And: yay for the shout out to Naperville! I went to college there.)
Fortunately David remained David, bless his crazy little heart.
I heard the sound of drawn steel. [David cuts down 2 of the 3 Hetwan escorting them].
[The last Hetwan] knew he was toast. He knew he was the cockroach in the Raid commercial. But David hesitated.
“Do you surrender?” David demanded, pointing the sword right at the Hetwan’s mouth.
“I serve Ka Anor. My death is irrelevant,” the creature said calmly.
“Yeah?” David asked. Then he lunged, buried half the sword in the Hetwan’s chest, yanked it back out, and watched the bug drop.
It was cold. It was necessary.
David’s face was a clouded mirror of my own horror. They were aliens, they were just bugs, but they had been alive, and now they weren’t.
[…] David wiped his blade on the grass. It looked like a calm, deliberate thing to do. It wasn’t. He wiped too long. He wanted it off. He didn’t want to be reminded of it later.
He had the creeps, no question. But there were other levels to David. What he’d just done made him sick. It also gave him a rush. – page 42-44 – Oh I can’t restrain myself: this entire scene, Christopher’s observations, it just seems like such the perfect melding of Rachel’s ruthlessness and Jake’s cold calculations in the midst of battle from the end of Animorphs. Right to the echoes of “It was cold. It was necessary.” That staccato structure is very reminiscent of Animorphs, when things were getting dark and difficult – yet that staccato makes it that much more pointed, more powerful.
I spotted David moving in on [April], talking to her in an intense way. The boy could single-handedly kill the cumulative buzz of the entire population of Jamaica on a Saturday night. – page 75
Ganymede leaned closer. “[…] We can take you to Olympus.”
At this point David sidled up. He was trying to seem like a happy, drunken party boy and it was pitiful to see. Like watching your parents try to “get down and boogie.” – page 77
Dionysus was about John-Goodman size [sic] and about Roberty-Downey-Jr.-level stoned. [sic] – page 81 – Hilarious mental image, this is. But too many dashes!
What the last book did for revealing more about David, this book does the same for revealing more about Christopher. Except with Christopher, we are getting all current-day issues that he is going through, in Everworld and the real world. In Everworld, he’s getting chewed out by the group for his bigoted jokes, all the while also still struggling to simultaneously survive and also avoid dealing with the Everworld reality in his own way (he’s rather of in denial about the whole situation…). In the real world, he is gets a new job where the manager and even other employees are up to some really shady stuff , as well as how his home life is not exactly “stable” .While David has his past more actively haunting his present, Christopher is dealing with enough issues in his present day that you can see where his abrasive actions/statements come from. Basically, I am giving this book 4 solid stars in large part due to the deepening characterization we get of Christopher. He has more skeletons in his closet than seemed apparent from his previous book, and man are these some skeletons!
On the lighter side of this book – once again there is not a “clearly defined” plot or point, other than surviving Hetwan lands and making it to Olympus with Ganymede and Dionysus. But this meandering (literally!) of the plot gives us the chance to see the landscape and alienness of Hetwan territory (Didn’t I mention it? Giant bugs and singing trees.) – and these landscapes are pretty awesome. It is also a bit of a break to the Everworld kids that they are encountering immortals who are not interested in killing them for once, and instead are, in their own ways, even helpful . If not for all of Christopher’s character development in this book, it would have gotten 3 stars from me.
I want to unpack the exchange they have on pages 57-58 (in the quotes below), jumping off a conversation about Ganymede. First off, the reference to gays and David’s almost defense of Christopher. I can’t help but think this has to do with . Next, April calling out the boys with “you have to turn [pure beauty] into a sexual thing, a challenge to your manhood” – we as a society are still working through this predisposition and reworking new ways to be accepting without feeling any sense of being affronted. Then, I like that April brings up premarital sex – soundly trouncing the misconceptions about her sexual activities, while also giving a nod to Catholicism’s teachings on sex in general. It’s nice to be able to be able to relate to a character with these views for once – it is not pounded into our heads, but left as a subtext which shapes her actions. Finally, there’s the April/David exchange at the end about Ganymede’s butt cheeks: I don’t think April really realizes what she has stumbled upon with David. It’s another instance of how we may not talk about the things in our childhood which shaped us (, religion, etc.), but how those experiences shape our reactions as we grow. All of our reactions as we grow are framed and shaped by our prior experiences, no matter what they were, whether they were benign or harmful.
Quotes:
“What kind of a name is Hitchcock?” [the manager asked me]
“Uh… I don’t know.”
“Your people. Where are they from?”
I shrugged. “My dad’s from Nebraska. My mom’s from Naperville.”
“Hitchcock. That wasn’t changed from anything, was it? Like, you know, Americanized?”
I was about a millimeter away from saying, “Yeah, we changed it from Kwan Lee Ho, can’t you tell?” but I didn’t. I just said, “No. I don’t think so.”
He nodded. “You can’t be too careful. I mean, this is still America. But it’s not all America. You know what I mean.” – page 30 – And yet, sadly this sort of racism is still all too alive and well in Chicago and the rest of the US. Do people forget that the US as we know it is a nation made up of all different peoples from all corners of the globe? Also, this exchange just screams ‘something bad is going to happen’ if he takes this job. (And: yay for the shout out to Naperville! I went to college there.)
Fortunately David remained David, bless his crazy little heart.
I heard the sound of drawn steel. [David cuts down 2 of the 3 Hetwan escorting them].
[The last Hetwan] knew he was toast. He knew he was the cockroach in the Raid commercial. But David hesitated.
“Do you surrender?” David demanded, pointing the sword right at the Hetwan’s mouth.
“I serve Ka Anor. My death is irrelevant,” the creature said calmly.
“Yeah?” David asked. Then he lunged, buried half the sword in the Hetwan’s chest, yanked it back out, and watched the bug drop.
It was cold. It was necessary.
David’s face was a clouded mirror of my own horror. They were aliens, they were just bugs, but they had been alive, and now they weren’t.
[…] David wiped his blade on the grass. It looked like a calm, deliberate thing to do. It wasn’t. He wiped too long. He wanted it off. He didn’t want to be reminded of it later.
He had the creeps, no question. But there were other levels to David. What he’d just done made him sick. It also gave him a rush. – page 42-44 – Oh I can’t restrain myself: this entire scene, Christopher’s observations, it just seems like such the perfect melding of Rachel’s ruthlessness and Jake’s cold calculations in the midst of battle from the end of Animorphs. Right to the echoes of “It was cold. It was necessary.” That staccato structure is very reminiscent of Animorphs, when things were getting dark and difficult – yet that staccato makes it that much more pointed, more powerful.
I spotted David moving in on [April], talking to her in an intense way. The boy could single-handedly kill the cumulative buzz of the entire population of Jamaica on a Saturday night. – page 75
Ganymede leaned closer. “[…] We can take you to Olympus.”
At this point David sidled up. He was trying to seem like a happy, drunken party boy and it was pitiful to see. Like watching your parents try to “get down and boogie.” – page 77
Dionysus was about John-Goodman size [sic] and about Roberty-Downey-Jr.-level stoned. [sic] – page 81 – Hilarious mental image, this is. But too many dashes!
February 3, 2016
3.5 stars again! 3 stars for the pacing/plot (once again, it's quite a bit of moving from A to B and trying to stay alive along the way, across various fun and fantastical settings); 4 stars for characterisation.
Sometimes I wonder just how unlikeable KAA set out to make Christopher, considering him using the slur f*g was a new low -- but I think that was the point, and worth it considering the character development he undergoes later, specifically
Also, not to mention, his and David's embarrassed "no homo" behaviour re: their attraction to Ganymede is precisely, exactly how the boys I knew behaved during high school. And the entire group points out how Christopher's basically ticking all the boxes in -ism bingo is accurate, and Christopher's "It was just a joke, don't they have a sense of humour?" petulance is, again, exactly the sort of butthurt that straight white guys always bust out when they've stepped on others' toes...
In other words, despite and probably because of his flaws, I really like Christopher and think he's a fascinating character. His second POV book digs further into his characterisation. In all the previous books, his tendency to say yes to alcohol seemed like the usual juvenile acting-out, wanting to cut loose and drink simply because he can in Everworld -- but in this book, we start realising how ugly his home life is, his parents' probable alcoholism, and the bad habits that he's picked up from them. He drinks excessively to cope, both with the terror of Everworld and with his own personal failings. You start to understand his escape into dark comedy a bit better; he's escapist at his core, and just wants to get away from his problems by any means necessary. A new subplot also emerges back home in the 'real' world, with Neo-Nazis at his new workplace targeting him for recruitment -- Christopher's discomfort with them, and his shame about the experience when he's around Jalil, his anxieties about Why did they pick me? and wondering if they saw something ugly in himself that he didn't realise... it's all compelling stuff.
Also, even though this book was back to being a bit more directionless ("get through Hetwan territory safely" isn't very concrete as a goal), I was still fine with it, because the group teaming up with a pair of benign immortals is great: a good break from the menacing gods of books past, and prime fodder for some comedy. Besides, I'm glad that the Greek mythology was saved for the 6th/7th book, and the series instead kicked off with Norse and Viking -- not because I don't love those kooky Greeks, but because they're way overrepresented in fiction as far as mythologies go.
The Hetwan worldbuilding is also great; you get the feeling of KAA being back in her element of describing alien lifeforms and planets, a bit of science fiction edging into a series that is so wholly fantasy otherwise. Also:
Favourite quotes:
Sometimes I wonder just how unlikeable KAA set out to make Christopher, considering him using the slur f*g was a new low -- but I think that was the point, and worth it considering the character development he undergoes later, specifically
Also, not to mention, his and David's embarrassed "no homo" behaviour re: their attraction to Ganymede is precisely, exactly how the boys I knew behaved during high school. And the entire group points out how Christopher's basically ticking all the boxes in -ism bingo is accurate, and Christopher's "It was just a joke, don't they have a sense of humour?" petulance is, again, exactly the sort of butthurt that straight white guys always bust out when they've stepped on others' toes...
In other words, despite and probably because of his flaws, I really like Christopher and think he's a fascinating character. His second POV book digs further into his characterisation. In all the previous books, his tendency to say yes to alcohol seemed like the usual juvenile acting-out, wanting to cut loose and drink simply because he can in Everworld -- but in this book, we start realising how ugly his home life is, his parents' probable alcoholism, and the bad habits that he's picked up from them. He drinks excessively to cope, both with the terror of Everworld and with his own personal failings. You start to understand his escape into dark comedy a bit better; he's escapist at his core, and just wants to get away from his problems by any means necessary. A new subplot also emerges back home in the 'real' world, with Neo-Nazis at his new workplace targeting him for recruitment -- Christopher's discomfort with them, and his shame about the experience when he's around Jalil, his anxieties about Why did they pick me? and wondering if they saw something ugly in himself that he didn't realise... it's all compelling stuff.
Also, even though this book was back to being a bit more directionless ("get through Hetwan territory safely" isn't very concrete as a goal), I was still fine with it, because the group teaming up with a pair of benign immortals is great: a good break from the menacing gods of books past, and prime fodder for some comedy. Besides, I'm glad that the Greek mythology was saved for the 6th/7th book, and the series instead kicked off with Norse and Viking -- not because I don't love those kooky Greeks, but because they're way overrepresented in fiction as far as mythologies go.
The Hetwan worldbuilding is also great; you get the feeling of KAA being back in her element of describing alien lifeforms and planets, a bit of science fiction edging into a series that is so wholly fantasy otherwise. Also:
Favourite quotes:
May 13, 2020
Oh my god, this book...yeap, only 2 stars.
This was the worst book I read in the series. It's the sixth and the halfway point and I just did not like it.
It is mainly due to the fact that it was narrated by the worst character, Christopher, and nothing happened in this book. It was all just a mess.
At some point, my brain just went blank and I breezed through the last 60 pages.
I couldn't take it anymore, especially after that one scene where Christopher finds himself in the real world in a back door meeting with a Nazi supremacist.
Erm HELLO?
Ergh, his character has the whole package, folks! Rascist, sexist, anti-semitic AND homophobic. He jokes about it and gets mad when the others correct him because he can't see that making jokes about these topics are NOT OKAY. He is that typical "Oh I can't be rascist because I have a black friend" character and the way he disrespects women...argh, I actually get so irked.
*breathes* need to remind myself that the series was written in the 90s and it. is. just. HIM
Honestly, it was so damn difficult to get through this book that I just went brain dead after 100 pages. It got worse towards the end when something happened and it traumatised him, causing him to spiral into self-pity and I CANNOT stand that in characters.
GET A GRIP!!!!
LET IT GO!!!!
Yes, for those of you who have read it, call me heartless but COME ON!
I also could be biased because I genuinely dislike this character so much.
Thank the gods the next book is about April and an arc I like because this book really had nothing going on, plot-wise - douchebag aside. It was just chaotic scene after chaotic scene. A mishmash of chases and fights.
Granted though, I will say, the reason that this book didn't get one star is that Christopher is dealing with a lot *rolls eyes* and he recognises his errors and prejudices.
So, that's something I suppose (growth? development?)
Glad to be done with it. Here's hoping the next compensates for this disaster.
This was the worst book I read in the series. It's the sixth and the halfway point and I just did not like it.
It is mainly due to the fact that it was narrated by the worst character, Christopher, and nothing happened in this book. It was all just a mess.
At some point, my brain just went blank and I breezed through the last 60 pages.
I couldn't take it anymore, especially after that one scene where Christopher finds himself in the real world in a back door meeting with a Nazi supremacist.
Erm HELLO?
Ergh, his character has the whole package, folks! Rascist, sexist, anti-semitic AND homophobic. He jokes about it and gets mad when the others correct him because he can't see that making jokes about these topics are NOT OKAY. He is that typical "Oh I can't be rascist because I have a black friend" character and the way he disrespects women...argh, I actually get so irked.
*breathes* need to remind myself that the series was written in the 90s and it. is. just. HIM
Honestly, it was so damn difficult to get through this book that I just went brain dead after 100 pages. It got worse towards the end when something happened and it traumatised him, causing him to spiral into self-pity and I CANNOT stand that in characters.
GET A GRIP!!!!
LET IT GO!!!!
Yes, for those of you who have read it, call me heartless but COME ON!
I also could be biased because I genuinely dislike this character so much.
Thank the gods the next book is about April and an arc I like because this book really had nothing going on, plot-wise - douchebag aside. It was just chaotic scene after chaotic scene. A mishmash of chases and fights.
Granted though, I will say, the reason that this book didn't get one star is that Christopher is dealing with a lot *rolls eyes* and he recognises his errors and prejudices.
So, that's something I suppose (growth? development?)
Glad to be done with it. Here's hoping the next compensates for this disaster.
July 15, 2020
Ugh.
Christopher is supposed to be the funny guy of the story, but really, he’s just a racist, anti-Semitic, sexist, homophobe. Just ask Jalil, David, and April.
We have to suffer meeting Dionysus and Ganymede through his homophobic point of view. For those of you who aren’t familiar with lesser gods and immortals of Greek mythology: Dionysus is the god of wine and revelry, while Ganymede is a beautiful human who caught Zeus’s attention and was made immortal so he could be Zeus’s cupbearer. So of course Christopher has to make lots of gay jokes about him and even drops an f-bomb at least once.
Gross.
We also get a view into Christopher’s “real world” life, where he gets a job working for a white supremacist. When he declines to join Mr. Trent’s Zionist Occupation Government, not only does he lose his job, but he gets threatened by a guy with a swastika tattoo to not tell anyone what they’re doing.
I see this developing into Christopher’s “redemption arc” in the next book from his POV. Because of course, hanging out in Everworld with a Black guy, a Jewish guy, and a girl, and having them save his sorry butt every couple of chapters isn’t enough to make him view them as real people with real problems tied to their identities. That alone can’t be enough for him to stop making racist or sexist jokes, or being “uncomfortable” around gay men. Christopher needs a skinhead to carve a swastika into his little brother’s bike for him to realize “oh shoot, maybe bigots are bad?”.
It doesn’t help that David joins in with his homophobia against Ganymede (he’s the perfect man, so of course he makes them feel appreciative, and how dare a man recognize another man’s physique? How emasculating. So to be manly they have to be homophobic towards the source of their attractions. Bigoted jerks.)
This book did NOT make me like Christopher any more. Even his self pity party at the end was obnoxious and entitled.
Christopher is supposed to be the funny guy of the story, but really, he’s just a racist, anti-Semitic, sexist, homophobe. Just ask Jalil, David, and April.
We have to suffer meeting Dionysus and Ganymede through his homophobic point of view. For those of you who aren’t familiar with lesser gods and immortals of Greek mythology: Dionysus is the god of wine and revelry, while Ganymede is a beautiful human who caught Zeus’s attention and was made immortal so he could be Zeus’s cupbearer. So of course Christopher has to make lots of gay jokes about him and even drops an f-bomb at least once.
Gross.
We also get a view into Christopher’s “real world” life, where he gets a job working for a white supremacist. When he declines to join Mr. Trent’s Zionist Occupation Government, not only does he lose his job, but he gets threatened by a guy with a swastika tattoo to not tell anyone what they’re doing.
I see this developing into Christopher’s “redemption arc” in the next book from his POV. Because of course, hanging out in Everworld with a Black guy, a Jewish guy, and a girl, and having them save his sorry butt every couple of chapters isn’t enough to make him view them as real people with real problems tied to their identities. That alone can’t be enough for him to stop making racist or sexist jokes, or being “uncomfortable” around gay men. Christopher needs a skinhead to carve a swastika into his little brother’s bike for him to realize “oh shoot, maybe bigots are bad?”.
It doesn’t help that David joins in with his homophobia against Ganymede (he’s the perfect man, so of course he makes them feel appreciative, and how dare a man recognize another man’s physique? How emasculating. So to be manly they have to be homophobic towards the source of their attractions. Bigoted jerks.)
This book did NOT make me like Christopher any more. Even his self pity party at the end was obnoxious and entitled.
October 2, 2024
This one was not my favorite, and I would have given it two stars if not for Christopher's B-Plot in the old world. There wasn't much to the story, not a lot of suspense. They spend the entire book walking from one end of Hetwan country to the other and frankly it isn't very interesting.
Dionysus was annoying. Honestly, I don't love most media interpretations of Dionysus anyway. They always make him a fat and lazy drunk who isn't useful for anything, but there's so much more to Dionysus as a god than most media gives him credit for. He's not just the god of wine, he's the god of ritual insanity! I loved his use of the female Hetwan to escape the party boat but that was the only cool thing he did. I wish they had used him more wisely. Had him grow grape vines to tangle Hetwan or use some kind of insanity power on them to get Ganymede back. Oh well.
The aforementioned best part of the book, Christopher's old world pov, was very interesting. It showed a new side of him that you don't get to see often. Is he problematic? Yes. But he isn't hateful. He was willing to sacrifice his job for his morals, and even though he is constantly being accused of being a racist antisemite by the others due to his misplaced jokes, it shows a big character moment for him. Two stars for everything but Christopher in the real world, three stars because that addition is just that good.
Dionysus was annoying. Honestly, I don't love most media interpretations of Dionysus anyway. They always make him a fat and lazy drunk who isn't useful for anything, but there's so much more to Dionysus as a god than most media gives him credit for. He's not just the god of wine, he's the god of ritual insanity! I loved his use of the female Hetwan to escape the party boat but that was the only cool thing he did. I wish they had used him more wisely. Had him grow grape vines to tangle Hetwan or use some kind of insanity power on them to get Ganymede back. Oh well.
The aforementioned best part of the book, Christopher's old world pov, was very interesting. It showed a new side of him that you don't get to see often. Is he problematic? Yes. But he isn't hateful. He was willing to sacrifice his job for his morals, and even though he is constantly being accused of being a racist antisemite by the others due to his misplaced jokes, it shows a big character moment for him. Two stars for everything but Christopher in the real world, three stars because that addition is just that good.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
March 8, 2018
Aria di party (SPOILER)
Di Senna questa volta neanche l'ombra,ma incontriamo Dioniso,sempre ubriaco come vuole la tradizione greca,e un angelo bellissimo,Ganimede,catturati da un gruppo di Hetwan,pronti a portarli da Ka Anor (colui che divora gli dei).Con l'aiuto dei nostri ragazzi,tutti arrivano sul monte Olimpo,non prima di aver assistito ad un banchetto del grande divoratore degli dei (dove purtroppo qualcuno appena conosciuto muore).
Anche questo libro mi è piaciuto: forse un po' troppo sopra le righe nel momento della descrizione delle feste fatte da Dioniso,ma comunque piacevole. Il regno di Ka Anor,te lo aspetti orribile,tipo quello di Hel, e invece qui ci sono alberi di diversi tipi e colori che cantano di continuo,che vanno in estasi con i raggi del sole tra le loro foglie,che ricrescono non appena abbattuti.L'unica nota negativa sono questi Hetwan,grandi insetti tipo mosche,completamente privi di ogni sentimento,automi agli ordini del dio cattivo.
E ora sono curiosa di sapere cosa farà il grande Zeus...
Di Senna questa volta neanche l'ombra,ma incontriamo Dioniso,sempre ubriaco come vuole la tradizione greca,e un angelo bellissimo,Ganimede,catturati da un gruppo di Hetwan,pronti a portarli da Ka Anor (colui che divora gli dei).Con l'aiuto dei nostri ragazzi,tutti arrivano sul monte Olimpo,non prima di aver assistito ad un banchetto del grande divoratore degli dei (dove purtroppo qualcuno appena conosciuto muore).
Anche questo libro mi è piaciuto: forse un po' troppo sopra le righe nel momento della descrizione delle feste fatte da Dioniso,ma comunque piacevole. Il regno di Ka Anor,te lo aspetti orribile,tipo quello di Hel, e invece qui ci sono alberi di diversi tipi e colori che cantano di continuo,che vanno in estasi con i raggi del sole tra le loro foglie,che ricrescono non appena abbattuti.L'unica nota negativa sono questi Hetwan,grandi insetti tipo mosche,completamente privi di ogni sentimento,automi agli ordini del dio cattivo.
E ora sono curiosa di sapere cosa farà il grande Zeus...
June 26, 2020
Proseguono le avventure dei protagonisti, questa volta narrate da Christopher.
In questo libro si trovano nella tana degli esseri più pericolosi trovati fino ad ora, gli hetwan.
La storia generale fa fatica ad avanzare, l'unico obiettivo dei protagonisti è vagare per il mondo cercando di sopravvivere. L'impressione che mi fa è che siano tutti romanzi riempitivi e che si potrà decidere la validità della saga solo arrivati all'ultimo capitolo.
In questo libro si trovano nella tana degli esseri più pericolosi trovati fino ad ora, gli hetwan.
La storia generale fa fatica ad avanzare, l'unico obiettivo dei protagonisti è vagare per il mondo cercando di sopravvivere. L'impressione che mi fa è che siano tutti romanzi riempitivi e che si potrà decidere la validità della saga solo arrivati all'ultimo capitolo.
February 5, 2025
I do agree that this possibly has not aged well, but I do appreciate that this book is meant to illustrate the lowest point of Christopher's character arc and it was written in 2000 so I give it a little grace. I've always felt that Christopher is an interesting perspective to read from, even when he's at the most intolerable and I do enjoy watching him grow over the next few books.
That being said, it is a lot and I can see why this book wouldn't be people's favorites.
That being said, it is a lot and I can see why this book wouldn't be people's favorites.
March 29, 2021
Still not a christopher fan, but i at least understand him a little better.
Much like the other books, our troop is pretty much just randomly roaming around and end up having to help the god of partying get home, with a short cut threw an alien gods home. an alien god who just so happens to eat other gods for a snack. just good old family fun!
Much like the other books, our troop is pretty much just randomly roaming around and end up having to help the god of partying get home, with a short cut threw an alien gods home. an alien god who just so happens to eat other gods for a snack. just good old family fun!
April 30, 2019
Not super fan of the trope of slightly racist person meets a full fledged racist to show how this character could be way worse but still enjoyed this book (most likely thanks to Ganymedes than anything else). It would be nice this book to be the beggining of Christopher's character growth.
September 29, 2019
Eh, by the back cover I thought this book would be about Olympus. But it's just them crossing Hetwan land. Also some of their escapes seemed a little too easy, like they just happen to lose the bugs on their home turf. Oh well, just trying to get through the series to the end.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
May 13, 2022
I liked it, a bit more cursive words though. It also had new words I haven't heard of or even pronounce haha... It was pretty funny as well... had its moments. Reminded me of me lots, do to the smallness moments in the book as im only 4"11 in half haha 😄
October 25, 2022
Damn, this is much worse the second time. This review sums it up so well, I'm just gonna refer to it instead of saying anything else.
October 6, 2024
"Shall we not have wenches? Should we not imbibe of the sacred vine?"
This may have been the first book I'd ever read that has queer representation.
Yeah, it hasn't aged well, but it was still important to ten year old me.
This may have been the first book I'd ever read that has queer representation.
Yeah, it hasn't aged well, but it was still important to ten year old me.
October 12, 2025
De los más entretenidos gracias a que hay más humor (las cogorzas de Dionysus y el outfit de Ganymede) y al P.O.V. un poco desquiciado de Christopher, aunque su trama en el mundo real adquiere un tono algo turbio que no sé como puede acabar y que me interesa bastante.
August 23, 2017
I love this series. The constant pop culture references are dated, since it was published in 2000, but I can forgive that.
January 6, 2019
🎶 thanks for all the unresolved homophobia 🎶
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