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One day after school, young Jake wanders farther than he ever has before behind his house and into the large maze of a garden of bushes and rhododendron with wild roots jutting in every direction. Instead of accompanying his little sister Molly home from school, he enters a world, through a heavy wooden door, very much unlike ours, where time is meaningless and elves, goblins, gnomes, and other creatures roam through forests. An abundance of portal holes appears through which one can quickly come out the other side into new places and planets in the universe, locations where life and the rules of physics as we know it are completely different.
Jake ultimately befriends Lok—a being from another part of the universe—who can fly, read minds, and whose people are semi-robotic, being a combination of silicone body parts all efficiently regenerated and programmed by “guardians” who run Lok’s planet smoothly. Everything Jake experiences in his fantastical journey is quite unreal, rather dreamlike, and it only gets stranger when he accompanies Lok to his home planet in an effort to ultimately find his way back home to Earth and his mum and dad.
Young readers will surely enjoy Hunt’s sci-fi and fantasy narrative, as excitement builds in learning what Jake, the protagonist, will find just beyond every corner and on each new page. This book is pure entertainment and easygoing escapism, served up in a most gentle, often humorous, and G-rated fashion. It is perfect for piquing the interest of children who seek to travel—with Jake and Lok—through different dimensions of time and space. In each new world, the rules of what is possible keep on changing, and both danger and strange excitement never cease. Indeed, in Hunt’s book, imagination soars and creativity reigns supreme.