While at the library, I pulled out Paul Melko’s The Broken Universe. I started reading it and it seemed familiar and new at the same time. So, I went and looked around and quickly realized that the book was the sequel to The Walls of the Universe. A book which I had read a few years ago. From what I remember, the original book was an interesting take on a kid having a universal transporter (Family Guy’s Stewie used a similar device in a couple of episodes). This sequel picks up soon after the events that ended the first book and ends on a cliffhanger which will (I assume) lead to another book. Let’s take a look.

In the first book, John Rayburn is displaced from his universe by John Rayburn (hereinafter known as Prime) from a different universe. The team labels the various universes by numbers and John and Primes universes are in the 7000s. Prime tries to exploit John’s universe with a toy he brought from his universe, the rubix cube. While John, in his new universe had accidentally introduced pinball. John is joined in his travels with his girlfriend Casey and his friends Grace and Henry. They have also ran in to Alarians (travelers from another universe who don’t have a traveling device) who have a large corporation (Grauptham House) which they use to try to invest in technologies which will become more important. They Alarians and our heroes have a run-in with Grace being tortured. And our book starts.

The team works to get their pinball company (Pinball Wizards) back up and running. They are faced with a cash call because they have aligned themselves with Grauptham House and now need to get out from under the Alaraians while keeping the business cash flow going. Then they get the wonderful idea to recruit themselves. So they go to other universe and recruit other Johns and Caseys and Graces and Henrys. This works well and they are able to start getting orders (and sometimes supplies) from other universes which greatly extends their sales reach. The team also has to deal with Alarian women who were abused and want to escape (to another universe) to get away from the Alarian leaders. And the nightmare the Alarians warned our heroes about, the Vigs, comes up. The Vigs are a species that police the timeline and cleanse people who are polluting the timeline. The book also touches on disease vectors, multi-verse ethics, group sex with alternate universe versions of yourself and some other interesting topics.

Overall it’s a fun read, that, at times, tries to bite off too much. Melko is touching on so many interesting thoughts about a multiverse that he doesn’t have a lot of time to develop many of them. Melko does a wonderful job getting the reader to care about the characters and a herculean job of making sure to keep the same characters from different universes separate for the readers. The main characters handle every problem thrown at them too easily for most of the book. But it is a fun read and the characters and ideas explored make the book worth reading. Recommended.