THE DOUBLE-EDGED SWORD

A white British boy stumbles into the role of chosen one in this unimaginative urban portal fantasy.

Finmere Tingewick Smith has always lived a double life. Ever since he was left on the steps of London’s Old Bailey as an infant, he’s inexplicably spent his childhood secretly alternating years at two different schools, complete with two different uniforms and two different best friends. He has learned to blend into two completely different social environments without giving anything away. But on his 16th birthday, everything changes when Fin’s guardian is murdered. He learns that Judge Harlequin Brown was the leader of the (seemingly all-male) Order of the Knights of Nowhere, an organization dedicated to traveling between and protecting two distinct realms, The Somewhere (our known universe) and The Nowhere (the one of many parallel universes nearest to our own). When a Knight goes rogue, kidnapping The Nowhere’s Storyholder, a blonde woman, and throwing both universes into chaos, it’s up to Fin and his two best friends, upper-class white Christopher and working-class black Joe, to rescue the Storyholder and restore peace to the worlds. The third-person narration overflows with tedious information that distracts from and convolutes the plot. The few men of color and women who appear in the story are underdeveloped at best and stereotypical tropes or plot devices at worst.

Disappointingly derivative and awkwardly contrived; skip.