I remember reading this book in the 6th or 7th grade and thinking it was the best thing I had ever read. Unfortunately, at 28, the book doesn't live up to the hype my 12 year old self gave it. This was purely a nostalgia read for me. Now that I'm grown, I can see the writing for what it is; average. I love the story idea here, but some of the execution left me wishing to be finished with this book quickly, and it's not even that long! It also ended on a terrible cliffhanger with little build up. I felt like this wasn't a complete story. I like that we get so much set-up to Everworld at least. I think this book was a victim of its time. Books for young adults or middle grades weren't supposed to be over 200 pages, and that was for a trade copy paperback. Harry Potter hadn't yet broken that rule. So, Applegate tried to fit what could have been 300 or more pages of a truly detailed and breathtaking story and cram it in to too tight of a space. This resulted in an odd, disjointed feel. There wasn't enough showing and too much telling, which I think was for the sake of brevity. I didn't care for the sentence fragment, colloquial writing style this time around, but I ate it up when I was the target age.

I wanted to finish the series and never got past the second book. So I'm doing a favor to my sixth grade self and reading them all this year. Right now, I'm still okay with that commitment.