I just couldn't stomach it all after reading 1 out of 5 'books' within the book so I can't write a review on goodreads so I decided to write one here instead.
Obviously I didn't like it. The author seems to have this idea that withholding information makes a story intriguing and mysterious. If it was just one or 2 interesting big points that were unexplained, I'd be interested in finding out, but rather it was a lot of tiny details that wasn't told to the readers until the last minute. Josh never got satisfying answer to how the institution found out about him and it might be shown in the next books, but let's move on from that mystery and here's 20 more mysteries for you to ponder. Like everyone talking to Josh seems to give him like a quarter of any full explanations and it's not even a mystery half the time, it's just withheld information that is just told later on. I mean I guess that could be classified as a mystery, but most books make mysteries actually engaging like a puzzle and intriguing. This is just 'hey do this.' which Josh doesn't know how to and there are 0 hints to what this is, then just a few pages later someone goes 'oh you don't know what this is! Here's what it is' which is just annoying.
Something else that was annoying was the poor explanation of the science behind the whole thing. It actually is my downfall. I know it's a fantasy book and there's no set physics like the real world, but as a scientist, I like a bit of explanation and some sort of realistic view of things. The idea of a joined dream world itself is fine, but when someone starts bringing in time travel it makes things a bit more prone to plotholes and ridiculousness. Anyway, what I didn't like was the poor explanation of how items could be taken in to the dream world and taken out of the dream world. Well when I say poor explanation, I meant there were none. People just accepted it as is. A lot of things were accepted as is in fact. Like the associate kids just hang around the building Willy Nilly, how did they get there, do their parents care and what about time zones, or is everyone British? Why does Josh and baz take the bus when jumping there is way easier? What triggers jump? How do they jump between space? No explanations, just accept it.
Also just wanted to note I reread this part where Josh talks to this guy called Melvin like 10 times, but he never mentions gipart just max, but he figures it out?? Like this was so confusing.
Overall if I could rate the book having only read 1/5th of it, I'd give it maybe like 2/5
