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Three Worlds #1
Out of This World
Pel Brown has troubles in his basement. But it's not water leaking in -- it's magic. Sword-carrying barbarians are spilling through, demanding that Pel help them defeat Shadow, a dark force taking over their world. Meanwhile, on the other side of town, a spaceship has crashed in Amy Jewell's backyard, and the aliens want Amy's help against the Shadow seeking to conquer their world. When Pel and Amy go through the basement portal into the world of magic, the Shadow attacks and traps them inside. Now Pel and Amy find themselves entangled in escapades that will make them into heroes . . . or corpses.
269 pages, Paperback
First published February 8, 1994
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Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews
November 21, 2025
This starts out as a fun and light-hearted portal-fantasy story in which Pel Brown has a gateway to the land of fairy opening in his basement and Amy Jewell has a spaceship from the Galactic Empire crashing in her backyard. The contrast between the three worlds is illustrated very well by the Peter Peebles cover on the Del Rey first edition. It starts out as a kind of pedestrian but entertaining rollicking adventure but takes an unexpected and very jarring turn to the graphic and dark side with no warning. It's packaged to look like a book fit for kids, but it's very definitely not. I appreciated it as a surprising and well-written novel, but it was too much for me... I didn't attempt to read either of the sequels.
March 30, 2014
I don't usually write reviews, but there are only two for this book and they are way negative. While I don't think this is Watt-Evans' greatest book (The Lure of the Basilisk is still my favorite, followed by Dragon Weather), I think the other reviews miss what he's trying to do here.
SciFi/Fant has a tendency to put way too much plot into a book (hero grows up and saves the universe three times in a trilogy). I think what the author is doing here is to try to give that impossible task some reality. The book reads at first as the typical fast paced light hearted romp, and you might expect the universe to be saved right on time without the hero getting a scratch. Nope.
The author tries to show you it's real (the anti-grav cars have cheap flip top ashtrays), tells you it's real (Ted thinks the whole thing is a dream and there's a plain speech attempt to talk him out of it), and finally the whole thing does what reality tends to do and a whole bunch of characters die. The ones that don't are sold into slavery, tortured and raped. All in the light scifi/fant style. A little heavy handed maybe, but the author does warn us. He says it straight out several times.
There are a lot of fun references to things only us older folks would remember (flip top ashtrays? Horatio Hornblower? - no wait they made a movie of that), and the pacing and character development are what you'd expect from the genre.
Maybe it works, maybe it doesn't. There are certainly lots of other authors who have tried to make fantasy more realistic. This book takes a different approach than Donaldson's heavy narrative style, Cherryh's elaborate FTL, or Dick's dark and dirty (kibble?). This is more tongue-in-cheek.
I liked it.
SciFi/Fant has a tendency to put way too much plot into a book (hero grows up and saves the universe three times in a trilogy). I think what the author is doing here is to try to give that impossible task some reality. The book reads at first as the typical fast paced light hearted romp, and you might expect the universe to be saved right on time without the hero getting a scratch. Nope.
The author tries to show you it's real (the anti-grav cars have cheap flip top ashtrays), tells you it's real (Ted thinks the whole thing is a dream and there's a plain speech attempt to talk him out of it), and finally the whole thing does what reality tends to do and a whole bunch of characters die. The ones that don't are sold into slavery, tortured and raped. All in the light scifi/fant style. A little heavy handed maybe, but the author does warn us. He says it straight out several times.
There are a lot of fun references to things only us older folks would remember (flip top ashtrays? Horatio Hornblower? - no wait they made a movie of that), and the pacing and character development are what you'd expect from the genre.
Maybe it works, maybe it doesn't. There are certainly lots of other authors who have tried to make fantasy more realistic. This book takes a different approach than Donaldson's heavy narrative style, Cherryh's elaborate FTL, or Dick's dark and dirty (kibble?). This is more tongue-in-cheek.
I liked it.
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September 17, 2024Omg this book. The first 2/3 or 3/4 were perfectly pleasant fun, great for reading on a plane, as I was doing, just a mashup of genres with a bit of a wink and a nod about how stories work. A few references to "but this isn't a story" ha ha, and then SUDDENLY it goes absolutely grim, just to show, "no really, this IS the REAL WORLD and the real world is HARSH", I mean we're talking raping and murdering a 6 year old's mother before selling the child into slavery which she doesn't survive level of harshness. This is not what I signed up for! I can appreciate the sort of idea behind it, I guess, but the tone of the first 200 pages did not prepare me at all.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
September 20, 2018
Pel brown lives a normal suburban life, with a wife and daughter, never suspecting that there's more to the universe than the mundane existence he's used to. That changes when a strange gnome like creature steps through his basement wall, telling Pel it's from a different world and looking for help. As strange an event as that was, Pel chalks it up to a possible hallucination...until he gets another visitor from his basement wall, this time a normal looking man, but dressed in archaic clothes and carrying a sword.
As Pel tries to make sense of this, across down a spaceship appears out of thin air, and immediately plummets into Amy's backyard. She is half afraid and half curious, but relieved when a squad of blonde men exit and is torn between her curiosity and being upset with their trespassing.
Soon Pel and Amy and their respective other worldly visitors meet up, and learn that each visitor is from a different world other than earth, one based on magic and the other on high tech science, neither of which work on Earth. After consulting with their respective lawyers, and talking to each group, they decide to play out the strange stories, despite tales of an evil force both groups are fighting. Pel and Amy still feel they can't quite figure out the marketing angle for some new sci-fi show, and decide to push to find out for themselves.
After returning through the portal in Pel's basement, things suddenly take a turn from whimsical fantasy lark to a harsh reality of violence across multiple dimensions, with a handful of Earthlings caught along in the flow. Pel and Amy and their friends and family try to survive while applying logical Earth sensibilities to strange worlds.
Watt-evans applies his typical rational protagonists into what turns out to be a much darker fantasic world than his more common light hearted fare. It's a great change from his standard, while still keeping much of his normal style and tone. Very interested to see where the rest of the series goes.
As Pel tries to make sense of this, across down a spaceship appears out of thin air, and immediately plummets into Amy's backyard. She is half afraid and half curious, but relieved when a squad of blonde men exit and is torn between her curiosity and being upset with their trespassing.
Soon Pel and Amy and their respective other worldly visitors meet up, and learn that each visitor is from a different world other than earth, one based on magic and the other on high tech science, neither of which work on Earth. After consulting with their respective lawyers, and talking to each group, they decide to play out the strange stories, despite tales of an evil force both groups are fighting. Pel and Amy still feel they can't quite figure out the marketing angle for some new sci-fi show, and decide to push to find out for themselves.
After returning through the portal in Pel's basement, things suddenly take a turn from whimsical fantasy lark to a harsh reality of violence across multiple dimensions, with a handful of Earthlings caught along in the flow. Pel and Amy and their friends and family try to survive while applying logical Earth sensibilities to strange worlds.
Watt-evans applies his typical rational protagonists into what turns out to be a much darker fantasic world than his more common light hearted fare. It's a great change from his standard, while still keeping much of his normal style and tone. Very interested to see where the rest of the series goes.
January 25, 2020
This book is both incredibly real (to be appreciated for that) and also incredibly dark. The author does an impressive job of keeping the reader in the basis of reality, not letting your hopes get too high for what might happen.
While I love the fact this book keeps me in reality (don’t get me wrong, I think this book is genius), I read it for the escape that such genres provide. Reading this book without the beforehand knowledge that this is a genre-breaker that will have the heroes not just in a heavy reality-based story, but in a horrifyingly dark reality that tears down every other sci-fi/fantasy that has gone before to set it apart can catch you off-guard and shock you in more ways than you may be ready for. The heroes are systematically torn apart from what makes them unique, broken down, abused physically and mentally, and straight up killed.
While I appreciate the book for being what it is, and the author for making such an impressive break from every other book before, if you’re not prepared and ready for it, this book will mess you up for a while. I don’t believe in the whole “trigger warning” thing, but if you are interested in this book, be prepared that this will not be a happy ending or a feel-good book that gives you that oh-so-sweet catharsis. It keeps you violently rooted in this world of ours, with the mad, twisted humanity that you may be wanting to see be beaten somehow.
While I love the fact this book keeps me in reality (don’t get me wrong, I think this book is genius), I read it for the escape that such genres provide. Reading this book without the beforehand knowledge that this is a genre-breaker that will have the heroes not just in a heavy reality-based story, but in a horrifyingly dark reality that tears down every other sci-fi/fantasy that has gone before to set it apart can catch you off-guard and shock you in more ways than you may be ready for. The heroes are systematically torn apart from what makes them unique, broken down, abused physically and mentally, and straight up killed.
While I appreciate the book for being what it is, and the author for making such an impressive break from every other book before, if you’re not prepared and ready for it, this book will mess you up for a while. I don’t believe in the whole “trigger warning” thing, but if you are interested in this book, be prepared that this will not be a happy ending or a feel-good book that gives you that oh-so-sweet catharsis. It keeps you violently rooted in this world of ours, with the mad, twisted humanity that you may be wanting to see be beaten somehow.
November 1, 2025
This was unexpected. This book has real worldlike life, fantasy world life and science fiction world like life. Most authors don't get so raw in a science fiction and fantasy world. On the other hand, the author was thankfully not graphic. Characterization is decent in one since of the term and I will not talk about the other sense of the term. Talk about reluctant hero's.... and reluctant supporting characters who get the full dose of reality. I know this is vague (intentional), but now to find the second and third books in a trilogy over 25 years old.
September 9, 2020
The story was inventive but a little disjointed and ended very violent.
January 25, 2021
This is first in the Shadow series, want book 2 now
January 30, 2026
What a sledgehammer of a book - a seemingly whimsical and comical portal fantasy that hard tails it into space horror. All in all I found this enthralling and could not put it down.
March 19, 2009
Watt-Evans doing fantasy/sci-fi with alternate worlds and world hopping. I found the trilogy disappointing, with Watt-Evans experimenting with a darker style of story. Lots of promise, not much pay-off. I sold my copies.
November 14, 2014
This series is a deconstruction of the now-cliched "modern man goes through a portal to Fantasy Land" plot. It is also crushingly depressing and is the purest distillation of mood whiplash I've ever read, so be warned.
September 19, 2020
Two chapters in, and actively unappealing. Abandoned.
March 25, 2017
The ztart for any journey begins with the first step.
I do not know where the end of the mental sidewalk ends and the real world begins I do know that the 1st page in a book opens the crack of creativity that resides within this creative geniuses head and finds the way to share these wonders with those who read. Like Pel, not all hero's and their ilk are to be seen as major identifiable characters, rather they are the backbones of great writing. I want to write like Lawrence, Burrows, Doyle and others to whom word craft is the talent they share with us. Life would not be as rich as it is with their thoughts a d perspectives.
I do not know where the end of the mental sidewalk ends and the real world begins I do know that the 1st page in a book opens the crack of creativity that resides within this creative geniuses head and finds the way to share these wonders with those who read. Like Pel, not all hero's and their ilk are to be seen as major identifiable characters, rather they are the backbones of great writing. I want to write like Lawrence, Burrows, Doyle and others to whom word craft is the talent they share with us. Life would not be as rich as it is with their thoughts a d perspectives.
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews