The Thirteenth Reality ~ Mystery letters of riddles

Title: The 13th Relity: The Journal of Curious Letters

Author: James Dashner

Illustrator: Bryan Beus

ISBN: 1416991522

Warning! Spoilers ahead!

I needed a new book to read. I was looking for a book from a series that I've never heard before; something other than Harry Potter, Septimus Heap, Bobby Pendragon, Artemis Fowl or even Arthur Penhaligon. Those characters are from series that I know, that I've read. I want something new.

The 13th Reality: The Journal of Curious Letters was the book that I picked. The reason I chose it is because I was interested about the story regarding alternate realities. It's a cool theme. So let's start my review with the plot. The story revolves around Tick @ Atticus Higginbottom who received letters with riddles he need to solve if he decide to be on an adventure to save many, many lives. If he wasn't interested, then he can just burn the letters and everything will go back to normal. But of course he'll be interested in the letters, if not this book wouldn't exist.

The main attraction of the book are the riddles in which our main character received in 12 letters. In fact, almost 3/4 of the book involve the riddles, and lucky for us the riddles are quite fun. Readers can actually participate in order to solve the mysteries of the letters. Of course there are several other chapters in between it that involve things other than the riddles but I don't mind if the author completely cover 3/4 of the book with the riddles, like I said they were fun.

The last 1/4 of the book covers their adventures (their as in Tick and his friends) into other realities. To be honest, I was quite dissapointed when Tick finally solved the mystery letters as I was certain the rest of the pages (1/4 of the book that is) wouldn't be much interesting without the riddles. Now I'm glad to say that I was wrong, the last quarter of the book was packed with adventure and action, and clearly was the climax of the story. The author not only can come up with interesting riddles, but he can also write good action stuff too.

Now we move on to the characters. Sadly I think the main character, Atticus Higginbottom, was not as strong a character as some of the main stars that I've read from different series before (a lot of them I had mentioned above). In fact the author tried too hard to make him a good role model that at times he seemed fake. One example of this is when Tick's father constantly remind readers how glad he was to have a good son like Tick.

The other characters doesn't fair well too. Master George was annoying for me instead of funny (funny was what he intended to be). Sofia was a great character but sadly a bit underdeveloped. Paul and Sato were also underdeveloped; but I think Sato will make his presence felt in the future due to his mysterious background. Mothball and Rutger were quite interesting characters but not much were told about them which made readers quite hard to love them. The only character that I think had been developed well was Mistress Jane, the villain of the book. She's a powerful character that shines in every chapter she's in. Although her apperance in the book was not much, the author manage to make her a promising villain.

Although this book was not as great as I had hoped it to be, it was still a fun read largely thanks to the fun-filled and mysterious riddles that out main character needed to solve. The high-action plot near the end of the book was also entertaining and had nicely set up the plot for the next book in the series. I am looking forward to read the 2nd book in the series and judging by the interesting ending and powerful villain, I'm hoping it will be a great sequel to the first book.

Image courtesy of Simon & Schuster.