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The Dream Travelers Game
Three years have passed since Theo traveled to another dimension and discovered his identity in the Light. He’s more mature now and terrible trouble has swallowed him once more. When all hope seems to be lost, Theo is sucked into a virtual reality game set in an entirely new medieval world that is descending into chaos, as a small group of rebels seek to rescue their kingdom from the dark lord Marsuuv's rule. There, Theo, now a member of the rebels, must discover who he really is beyond the game—a fourteen year old boy in Florida who is a child of the light. A thrilling discovery of truth, perfect for young readers in today’s chaotic world. Ages 8 and older.
152 pages, Paperback
Published October 1, 2023
42 people want to read
About the author
Ted Dekker
191 books9,983 followersTed Dekker is known for novels that combine adrenaline-laced stories with unexpected plot twists, unforgettable characters, and incredible confrontations between good and evil. Ted lives in Austin with his wife LeeAnn and their four children.
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
November 28, 2023
In late 2018, Ted Dekker published an experimental foray into self-published children’s literature. It was really just a passion project that he wanted to do with his daughter, Kara. And it was wildly successful. Hundreds of thousands of copies sold. While Ted had dabbled in self-publishing with some other projects—namely his non-fiction works The Forgotten Way and The Way of Love—the commercial success of this series and the changing nature of traditional publishing led Dekker to move solely into self-publishing. In the past five years, with the exception of Play Dead, Dekker has focused on co-authorships and middle grade fiction.
Despite its overall success, I must admit that I wasn’t a huge fan of the four-book The Dream Traveler’s Quest series. The message—a convoluted and nuanced spirituality—overshadowed the story. The story itself was wildly uneven. And it clashed with other established lore within the world of the Circle. But I also realize that not all Dekker books are written personally for me and, if you look at the sales and the reviews from pleased parents and grandparents, it’s clear that Dekker was filling a Christian middle-grade niche that needed filling. When reviewing the original series, I had two main comments: 1) This feels like a video game plot rather than a story plot and 2) If you aren’t going to hold to the worldbuilding of Other Earth, put the story somewhere else.
Five years later, Ted Dekker has returned with a new coauthor and three new books for the series. 1) It’s set within a video game and 2) While there are characters from Other Earth, this story is set in the video game world of Viren. And I will say that those changes, for me, made a difference. It helped set the expectation and tone for the series. Dekker’s newest coauthor is H.R. Hutzel—who also partnered with him on the three-book middle-grade series Journey to Impossible Places. Hutzel has written a couple other YA supernatural thrillers—Anointed, Witness, and The Story of Life but has never been traditionally published. It’s an interesting collaboration and its interesting that after five years Dekker has chosen to return to Annelee and Theo and the Dream Traveler world.
The Dream Traveler’s Game is labeled as books 5, 6, and 7 of the Dream Traveler’s series, but they could be easily read as a standalone. This time, instead of being sucked into Other Earth through a Book of History, Theo is sucked into the video game world of Viren, created by Talya to help Theo remember the lessons he’d forgotten in the three years since his adventures in Other Earth. Think of it as the difference between the Robin Williams Jumanji and the Dwayne Johnson Jumanji.
The setup of the series is rather convoluted. While there is an insistence that this is just a game (created by a friend and mentor, no less), there’s also the insistence that the evil of Marsuuv is real and that Theo will actually die if he dies in the game. The setup of the game is that Theo must save the princess from the clutches of Marsuuv, find a lost book, and remember the lessons of his past. This will happen in three stages and he must get to a waypoint before his power/energy bar (represented by bars of tattoos on his arm) fades completely. In each stage, he can take on the avatar of a different person with a different backstory and different skills. When he becomes a new avatar, he’ll forget what he learned as the old avatar and the old avatar will become an NPC in the game. It’s an interesting premise, but the end result is that for each book, both the reader and the character are getting used to new characters. There cannot be any character depth because the characters are always changing. And despite the previous characters still existing as NPCs, they never feature in the story afterward even when they should be in the same general area as the current character. And none of the other characters in the story think it’s odd that so many people in their company are named Theo? The whole video game setup is one that could have worked, but ends up being both overly-complex and under-realized.
Unlike the previous series, which was very didactic and at least clear about teaching the Five Seals (of The Way of Love), The Dream Traveler’s Game is rather vague on what the spiritual teaching is supposed to be. I mean, it’s repeated ad nauseum because the characters keep forgetting because they change, but what it means or how it even affects the game isn’t always clear. It comes together better in the end, but through the journey there isn’t clarity of purpose. The characters are confusedly bumbling throughout their world and so are the readers. It’s all Deus ex Talyas that bring the story together.
In the end, in thinking of The Dream Traveler’s Game as a whole, it just doesn’t cohere for me. It’s a nuanced and vague spiritual lesson told through a complicated story structure with a tropish, simplistic plot and shallow characters—characters who had more depth in the previous series. Dekker’s other middle-grade work has been enjoyable. This series, for whatever reason, continues to struggle.
--
And we’re off! Book five of The Dream Travelers picks up three years after the events of The Dream Traveler’s Quest. A lot has happened in Theo’s life. The spiritual connection to Other Earth and the physical connection to his friends has vanished. The Book of History is gone. His parents have died. He now lives with his grandma in Florida. Three traumatic years. But then Theo sees a new game installed on his gaming console. Curiously, he opens it. And another adventure begins.
Theo finds himself sucked into the game and standing before Talya—a recurring figure in Dekker novels—who explains to him what’s going to happen. He must rescue the princess and save the world of Viren from Marsuuv…and also find a Book. Theo has forgotten who he is and this game might help him remember. He’s then thrust into a medieval world as a 14-year-old bard traveling with a group of rebels trying to save the Princess and overthrow Marsuuv.
The main plot of The Boy and His Song is a journey into the Dark Forest to find the antidote to a poison that is clouding the King’s mind. Along the way they meet Leah, an herbalist, who just may have some connection to Theo. It all leads them to the palace where there will be a showdown between Theo, Leah, and Marsuuv. Will they be able to save the King?
There are a few clever twists to the plot, but overall The Boy and His Song is fairly straightforward in terms of its plot. The characters’ dialogue is choppy and does not sound natural at all. At first, I thought it might have been the fault of the audiobook narrator but I got the same feeling reading the book as listening to it. There are enough connections to the world of the Circle, that it raises some expectations only to not do much of anything with them. Indeed, most of the novel’s problems seem to stem from “well, that’s the way the game works” instead of it feeling like a natural part of the story. And just as soon as things get interesting, the book is over.
The Boy and His Song has to do the work of setting up the entire series and with the series’ complicated structure in terms of explaining how the game works, introducing the characters, and so on, the pacing of the book struggles and feels uneven. This book is fifty pages or so longer than the other two in the series and it still feels like not much happens at all. Even by the end of the book, I’m not entirely sure how the system of the game is supposed to work or why the story wrapped up where it did, but we end in a waystation with one-third the journey over—the King not saved and Marsuuv alerted to the presence of Theo…and someone else.
--
The Dream Traveler’s Game is meant to be read as one story and with all three volumes releasing simultaneously (and not even available for individual purchase), book six naturally picks up right after book 5 as if it was only a chapter break. The Warrior and the Archer begins with the (spoilers!) revelation that the herbalist Leah is actually Annelee—Theo’s friend from the previous series. Sidenote: Ted is short for Theodore and his wife’s name is LeeAnn, so guess how Ted envisions this friendship. The characters choose their new avatars for their second adventure and step back out into the game.
Despite being new characters, they are now both part of the same rebel group trying to save Viren. And despite these characters presumably having been on the journey up to this point, no mention of them was ever made. Theo even chose the same name! Nobody was ever like, oh yeah, we have Theo the warrior and Theo the bard? This adventure takes them to the nearby kingdom of Saxum, where they ask for help in dealing with the threat of Marsuuv. But Saxum has their own problems and won’t commit troops to free Viren.
But suddenly, those other problems come to light. The Queen’s brother arrives and she discovers that he has allied with Marsuuv in an attempt to enact a coup. Somehow all of this lead to Theo having to 1v1 against the coup leader’s champion (named Lahmi, who in the Bible was a brother of Goliath). Theo wins and the Queen of Saxum rewards him by agreeing to fight Marsuuv. There’s a quick battle and then it’s on to the final book.
Like the previous book, The Warrior and the Archer has problems with pacing. Too much happens and nothing happens. Saxum does not make an appearance in the final book. Their armies actually don’t end up fighting against Marsuuv. Dekker and Hutzel introduce a whole other kingdom with its own warring factions and then do absolutely nothing with it. This was the most disappointing book of the three for me because there was nothing in this book that was necessary to the overarching story. Why does Theo fight Lahmi? There’s no compelling reason other that 1v1 tournament-style fights are a trope in children’s fantasy fiction and it fits the video game equivalent of a boss battle. The whole of the story works toward a conclusion that never happens and the things that do happen don’t feel compelled by the story. They’re just random. They’re random scenes meant to check off the list of fantasy tropes without any depth or meaning behind it.
The only purpose of The Warrior and the Archer is to carry the reader into the third and final book, Out of the Darkness. It cuts off a bit earlier than the previous book, leaving readers to wonder if they’ll even get to a waystation. Then it’s on to the book 7.
--
We now reach the third and final The Dream Traveler’s Game book. Theo and Annelee are searching for a waystation, ready to move into the third stage of the game. They still need to save the Princess. They still need to free Viren from the clutches of Marsuuv. And they still need to find a Book. The story, frankly, has been a mess up until now and Out of the Darkness does precious little to bring it all together.
However, I will say that Out of the Darkness is the most compelling of all three books. Marsuuv finally plays a prominent role. He’s now captured the two—Theo is now a savant, Annelee remains an archer—and is taking them to the Dark Forest to meet the Princess…and her lover, Teeleh.
And it’s here that the overarching plot shifts. It’s for the better, but it’s too late. It’s also just a rehash of the Circle trilogy. Teeleh doesn’t just want to conquer Viren. He’s trapped in the Dark Forest. But if he can get his claw on the Book, he can rewrite the game’s code and escape not just the Dark Forest but the video game world entirely.
Dekker and Hutzel give a little more clarity on the spiritual lessons of the series, along with the interesting twist that being a savant—wise in one’s own eyes—might just be a liability instead of something that helps. It’s engaging, but confusing. And it all leads to a rather predictable end. There’s so much to this series that had potential and it just feels like it wasn’t sketched out well enough. The ever-changing avatars prevent character development. Teeleh overshadows Marsuuv as the big bad, which feels jarring. Is Teeleh part of the game or an intrusion into it? We never know. The stakes don’t feel real because it’s literally a video game. Talya is absent and unhelpful. The pieces of a good story were here, but they just don’t cohere into anything. I’ve enjoyed Dekker’s other middle-grade work—especially his collaborations with Rachelle—but these just don’t work for me.
Despite its overall success, I must admit that I wasn’t a huge fan of the four-book The Dream Traveler’s Quest series. The message—a convoluted and nuanced spirituality—overshadowed the story. The story itself was wildly uneven. And it clashed with other established lore within the world of the Circle. But I also realize that not all Dekker books are written personally for me and, if you look at the sales and the reviews from pleased parents and grandparents, it’s clear that Dekker was filling a Christian middle-grade niche that needed filling. When reviewing the original series, I had two main comments: 1) This feels like a video game plot rather than a story plot and 2) If you aren’t going to hold to the worldbuilding of Other Earth, put the story somewhere else.
Five years later, Ted Dekker has returned with a new coauthor and three new books for the series. 1) It’s set within a video game and 2) While there are characters from Other Earth, this story is set in the video game world of Viren. And I will say that those changes, for me, made a difference. It helped set the expectation and tone for the series. Dekker’s newest coauthor is H.R. Hutzel—who also partnered with him on the three-book middle-grade series Journey to Impossible Places. Hutzel has written a couple other YA supernatural thrillers—Anointed, Witness, and The Story of Life but has never been traditionally published. It’s an interesting collaboration and its interesting that after five years Dekker has chosen to return to Annelee and Theo and the Dream Traveler world.
The Dream Traveler’s Game is labeled as books 5, 6, and 7 of the Dream Traveler’s series, but they could be easily read as a standalone. This time, instead of being sucked into Other Earth through a Book of History, Theo is sucked into the video game world of Viren, created by Talya to help Theo remember the lessons he’d forgotten in the three years since his adventures in Other Earth. Think of it as the difference between the Robin Williams Jumanji and the Dwayne Johnson Jumanji.
The setup of the series is rather convoluted. While there is an insistence that this is just a game (created by a friend and mentor, no less), there’s also the insistence that the evil of Marsuuv is real and that Theo will actually die if he dies in the game. The setup of the game is that Theo must save the princess from the clutches of Marsuuv, find a lost book, and remember the lessons of his past. This will happen in three stages and he must get to a waypoint before his power/energy bar (represented by bars of tattoos on his arm) fades completely. In each stage, he can take on the avatar of a different person with a different backstory and different skills. When he becomes a new avatar, he’ll forget what he learned as the old avatar and the old avatar will become an NPC in the game. It’s an interesting premise, but the end result is that for each book, both the reader and the character are getting used to new characters. There cannot be any character depth because the characters are always changing. And despite the previous characters still existing as NPCs, they never feature in the story afterward even when they should be in the same general area as the current character. And none of the other characters in the story think it’s odd that so many people in their company are named Theo? The whole video game setup is one that could have worked, but ends up being both overly-complex and under-realized.
Unlike the previous series, which was very didactic and at least clear about teaching the Five Seals (of The Way of Love), The Dream Traveler’s Game is rather vague on what the spiritual teaching is supposed to be. I mean, it’s repeated ad nauseum because the characters keep forgetting because they change, but what it means or how it even affects the game isn’t always clear. It comes together better in the end, but through the journey there isn’t clarity of purpose. The characters are confusedly bumbling throughout their world and so are the readers. It’s all Deus ex Talyas that bring the story together.
In the end, in thinking of The Dream Traveler’s Game as a whole, it just doesn’t cohere for me. It’s a nuanced and vague spiritual lesson told through a complicated story structure with a tropish, simplistic plot and shallow characters—characters who had more depth in the previous series. Dekker’s other middle-grade work has been enjoyable. This series, for whatever reason, continues to struggle.
--
And we’re off! Book five of The Dream Travelers picks up three years after the events of The Dream Traveler’s Quest. A lot has happened in Theo’s life. The spiritual connection to Other Earth and the physical connection to his friends has vanished. The Book of History is gone. His parents have died. He now lives with his grandma in Florida. Three traumatic years. But then Theo sees a new game installed on his gaming console. Curiously, he opens it. And another adventure begins.
Theo finds himself sucked into the game and standing before Talya—a recurring figure in Dekker novels—who explains to him what’s going to happen. He must rescue the princess and save the world of Viren from Marsuuv…and also find a Book. Theo has forgotten who he is and this game might help him remember. He’s then thrust into a medieval world as a 14-year-old bard traveling with a group of rebels trying to save the Princess and overthrow Marsuuv.
The main plot of The Boy and His Song is a journey into the Dark Forest to find the antidote to a poison that is clouding the King’s mind. Along the way they meet Leah, an herbalist, who just may have some connection to Theo. It all leads them to the palace where there will be a showdown between Theo, Leah, and Marsuuv. Will they be able to save the King?
There are a few clever twists to the plot, but overall The Boy and His Song is fairly straightforward in terms of its plot. The characters’ dialogue is choppy and does not sound natural at all. At first, I thought it might have been the fault of the audiobook narrator but I got the same feeling reading the book as listening to it. There are enough connections to the world of the Circle, that it raises some expectations only to not do much of anything with them. Indeed, most of the novel’s problems seem to stem from “well, that’s the way the game works” instead of it feeling like a natural part of the story. And just as soon as things get interesting, the book is over.
The Boy and His Song has to do the work of setting up the entire series and with the series’ complicated structure in terms of explaining how the game works, introducing the characters, and so on, the pacing of the book struggles and feels uneven. This book is fifty pages or so longer than the other two in the series and it still feels like not much happens at all. Even by the end of the book, I’m not entirely sure how the system of the game is supposed to work or why the story wrapped up where it did, but we end in a waystation with one-third the journey over—the King not saved and Marsuuv alerted to the presence of Theo…and someone else.
--
The Dream Traveler’s Game is meant to be read as one story and with all three volumes releasing simultaneously (and not even available for individual purchase), book six naturally picks up right after book 5 as if it was only a chapter break. The Warrior and the Archer begins with the (spoilers!) revelation that the herbalist Leah is actually Annelee—Theo’s friend from the previous series. Sidenote: Ted is short for Theodore and his wife’s name is LeeAnn, so guess how Ted envisions this friendship. The characters choose their new avatars for their second adventure and step back out into the game.
Despite being new characters, they are now both part of the same rebel group trying to save Viren. And despite these characters presumably having been on the journey up to this point, no mention of them was ever made. Theo even chose the same name! Nobody was ever like, oh yeah, we have Theo the warrior and Theo the bard? This adventure takes them to the nearby kingdom of Saxum, where they ask for help in dealing with the threat of Marsuuv. But Saxum has their own problems and won’t commit troops to free Viren.
But suddenly, those other problems come to light. The Queen’s brother arrives and she discovers that he has allied with Marsuuv in an attempt to enact a coup. Somehow all of this lead to Theo having to 1v1 against the coup leader’s champion (named Lahmi, who in the Bible was a brother of Goliath). Theo wins and the Queen of Saxum rewards him by agreeing to fight Marsuuv. There’s a quick battle and then it’s on to the final book.
Like the previous book, The Warrior and the Archer has problems with pacing. Too much happens and nothing happens. Saxum does not make an appearance in the final book. Their armies actually don’t end up fighting against Marsuuv. Dekker and Hutzel introduce a whole other kingdom with its own warring factions and then do absolutely nothing with it. This was the most disappointing book of the three for me because there was nothing in this book that was necessary to the overarching story. Why does Theo fight Lahmi? There’s no compelling reason other that 1v1 tournament-style fights are a trope in children’s fantasy fiction and it fits the video game equivalent of a boss battle. The whole of the story works toward a conclusion that never happens and the things that do happen don’t feel compelled by the story. They’re just random. They’re random scenes meant to check off the list of fantasy tropes without any depth or meaning behind it.
The only purpose of The Warrior and the Archer is to carry the reader into the third and final book, Out of the Darkness. It cuts off a bit earlier than the previous book, leaving readers to wonder if they’ll even get to a waystation. Then it’s on to the book 7.
--
We now reach the third and final The Dream Traveler’s Game book. Theo and Annelee are searching for a waystation, ready to move into the third stage of the game. They still need to save the Princess. They still need to free Viren from the clutches of Marsuuv. And they still need to find a Book. The story, frankly, has been a mess up until now and Out of the Darkness does precious little to bring it all together.
However, I will say that Out of the Darkness is the most compelling of all three books. Marsuuv finally plays a prominent role. He’s now captured the two—Theo is now a savant, Annelee remains an archer—and is taking them to the Dark Forest to meet the Princess…and her lover, Teeleh.
And it’s here that the overarching plot shifts. It’s for the better, but it’s too late. It’s also just a rehash of the Circle trilogy. Teeleh doesn’t just want to conquer Viren. He’s trapped in the Dark Forest. But if he can get his claw on the Book, he can rewrite the game’s code and escape not just the Dark Forest but the video game world entirely.
Dekker and Hutzel give a little more clarity on the spiritual lessons of the series, along with the interesting twist that being a savant—wise in one’s own eyes—might just be a liability instead of something that helps. It’s engaging, but confusing. And it all leads to a rather predictable end. There’s so much to this series that had potential and it just feels like it wasn’t sketched out well enough. The ever-changing avatars prevent character development. Teeleh overshadows Marsuuv as the big bad, which feels jarring. Is Teeleh part of the game or an intrusion into it? We never know. The stakes don’t feel real because it’s literally a video game. Talya is absent and unhelpful. The pieces of a good story were here, but they just don’t cohere into anything. I’ve enjoyed Dekker’s other middle-grade work—especially his collaborations with Rachelle—but these just don’t work for me.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
November 16, 2023
Great book, will read the rest of the trilogy. My 8 year old loves the Dekker family’s young adult books. They always have a solid message along with creative worlds and story telling.
November 23, 2023
This is really good. I liked how the characters are stuck in a video game and got to choose different avatars. Love the story. Loved how they found their true identities in the light
December 14, 2023
Another wild journey into the world that Ted Dekker continues to evolve along with HR Hutzel to tell another thought provoking story suitable for younger readers.
November 29, 2025
This is a clean middle grade series, about what happens after "The Dream Traveler's Quest."
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