World-Walker

Rating:
Summary: fantastic first rate urban fantasy
Review: World-walkers, using a gatestone, can traverse parallel worlds; and their job is to keep the orbs separate and prevent the use of unauthorized world-walking, which would mean the destruction of all the worlds. The New Worlders do not believe what Central Headquarters enforces. They feel unlimited world-walking would keep the connections that were meant to be viable in order to keep the parallel worlds safe from the destruction that Central in its ignorance is causing.

The Other(Jesse) is illegally going from one world into another searching for something that he never had and desperately wants: peace of mind. World-Walker Suli Grail is charged by Central to, contain him or kill him because he is a natural, able to walk the worlds without the stone. His travels change the fate of his doppelgangers in other worlds; musician Jesse Farrell is wanted by the police thanks to the machinations of the Other. Suli gets in the middle of the confrontation and her actions loosen the emotions encased in ice around the Other. Working together, they try to find a way to insure that the Other is free to walk the worlds he chooses thus assuring that the worlds will continue to exist.

Melisa Michaels has written a fantastic first rate urban fantasy. The Other and the other Jessies were verbally and physically abused by their fathers and depending on how they reacted to abuse, each Jessie in his own world is a little different from their doppelgangers. The OTHER isn't evil but that doesn't matter to Central who wants to punish him for breaking the rules, not realizing he is the pivot upon which all the worlds rest.

Harriet Klausner