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The fluid plot of Albo's novel spans the years of 1986 to 2044 t not chronologically. Tommy in 1986 and Pris in 2044 are transported to the astral plane via a book, The Sacred Art of Astral Projection. Tommy wants to rescue his best friend (and secret love), Rene, while Pris worries about her childhood best friend, Jayde. Jayde is going on a date with their online boyfriend, but Pris thinks he sounds too good to be true. Her suspicion is confirmed when Jayde fails to return. Tommy and Pris are guided through the lower astral plane to the upper astral plane in search of the means to recover their friends. When they are reunited, they face a harrowing and ultimately heartbreaking escape from a monster, and Tommy and Pris return to their own times, where their lives have changed. Albo explores the universal emotions of adolescence that not only span time and dimension but are ultimately connected in this lucid and thought-provoking novel with appealing and sympathetic characters. Albo also includes a simple and accessible primer on astral projection.
Kirkus ReviewsTeens venture through time and space.In 1986, Tommy Gaye struggles with romantic feelings toward his best friend, Renaldo Calabasas. In 2044, Pris, who has a form of vitiligo that manifests as black-and-white stripes and was adopted by her Uncle Myles, a kind former nurse, feels isolated because of her disconnect from any family of origin. The two stories intertwine through dreams, astral projection, and time travel after René is supposedly struck by lightning and develops a new personality post-recovery. He was, in fact, stolen away into another dimension, his body inhabited by an inhuman evil. The past is rife with homophobia and fears around HIV/AIDS. In the future, an unnamed Virus-as well as Fires-still constrains everyday life, but the acronym LGBTQIA+ has faded into irrelevance since "people just define their gender and their sexuality for themselves now" (though trans women of color still seem uniquely vulnerable to violence). Presented through multiple close-thirdâperson perspectives, the book finally allows readers to join the characters on dangerous interdimensional travels about halfway through the story, with a strange cereal brand mascot as their guide. Unfortunately, some interesting plot elements suffocate due to the flat prose that is weighed down by frequent use of the passive voice that undermines even highly emotional scenes and is padded out with sympathetically bad high school poetry. Tommy is cued White; René is Argentinian.Heartfelt but hard to get through. (Science fiction. 13-17)
Publishers Weekly (Fri Oct 06 00:00:00 CDT 2023)Two teens living in different times connect through dreams to battle a mysterious evil in this ambitious speculative romance by Albo (
Gr 9 Up —Tommy and Pris are both young, queer teens at Heron High, separated only by time—Tommy's present is 1986, while Pris is in the year 2044. When a mysterious book and suspicious series of events results in a demon from the astral plane effectively kidnapping Tommy's crush, Rene, and Pris's best friend, Jayde, the two find themselves working together on the astral plane—directed by a lollipop cereal mascot as their spirit guide—to come to the rescue. "The Virus," implied to be COVID-19, is still present in 2044 with schools experiencing lockdowns and requiring additional safety measures; in 1986, the AIDS crisis is mentioned several times but is largely tangential to the plot. With the story told from the points of view of all four teens as well as an additional two characters, the narrative is often cluttered and difficult to follow. The pacing is rapid, with little time spent fleshing out the characters outside of nominal description of their racial and queer identities. Supplemental material about astral projection is included at the end of the book. VERDICT An ambitious and convoluted adventure that misses the mark; not recommended for purchase.—Austin Ferraro
ALA Booklist (Tue Feb 28 00:00:00 CST 2023)
Kirkus Reviews
Publishers Weekly (Fri Oct 06 00:00:00 CDT 2023)
School Library Journal (Mon May 01 00:00:00 CDT 2023)
Tommy
Tommy was crying, holding his head in his hands, saying over and over that he should have kissed Renaldo Calabasas that night when he had the chance.
It had been a week since Renaldo was struck by lightning. Tommy was sitting where it happened: under the charred tree in Hollow Pond Park, huddled into the base of the blackened trunk--the exact spot where they almost kissed. He wrote down his thoughts.
You are like smoke, a dark dance in the air.
No.
You are a storm cloud, weightlessly heavy.
No.
You are as mysteriously beautiful as black smoke.
No.
A crow.
No.
A raven?
Tommy crossed out his words. He was such a shitty poet. He wasn't even a smidge as good as René. And his bad poetry couldn't match what he was feeling.
But he kept writing in the book. He had to. Renaldo Calabasas was lost in the astral plane, floating somewhere in its expanse. And it was the book that told Tommy that if he wanted to find Renaldo and bring him back to Earth, he had to write down how he felt. He had to get close to him in words, and the words would be his path to him.
The book told him to write it all out.
The book. The book.
June,
Three Months Earlier
Tommy stood at the bike rack watching Renaldo Calabasas unchain his clunky old banana-seat Schwinn.
René was sweating through his white button-down shirt, and Tommy could see the contours of his chest through the wet fabric.
It was Friday, the last day of school, and everyone had cleared out in an end-of-the-year frenzy, ripping up and throwing away their schoolwork and locker decorations like they were getting out of jail. The trash bins next to them were filled with spiral notebooks, crumpled papers, tattered locker posters of Van Halen and the Doors. All the wealthy juniors and seniors of Herron High had driven away in their cars to some popular person's party somewhere. Tommy wouldn't know where.
"You ready to go?" Renaldo asked, piling books into his basket before stopping suddenly. He leaned against his bike and stared up at the sky.
"What are you looking at?" Tommy asked.
"I'll come to you when the sky is cerulean blue," René said.
"What?"
"That sentence. It came to me last night after a dream. Like someone said it to me. I'm just wondering if this is what 'cerulean blue' is."
Tommy followed Renaldo's gaze. The sky was strangely dark in color, like the coldness of outer space was closer than normal. Cerulean, cerulean, Tommy repeated to himself.
Renaldo rummaged through the bike basket and ripped out a page from his notebook. Tommy could see that there was a poem written on it titled "Storm Omen." Even by sight, Tommy knew it would be good and that it would appear in the next Cornucopia--the student literary magazine they worked on. Everything René wrote made it in there.
"It's about lightning," René explained, still staring at the sky, "about this thing called keraunoscopy. Do you know that word?"
"No, sorry," Tommy said. He wanted to say, Do you know how beautiful you are? But of course he didn't.
"It means divination by lightning," said Renaldo. "I mean, isn't that the most amazing word ever? Apparently, the Etruscans believed that lightning and thunder were omens."
Tommy only had a vague idea who the Etruscans were but nodded assuredly, anyway. Renaldo was so well-read. Lightning was his latest obsession.
"Lightning on a Tuesday or Wednesday was good luck for crops. But on a Sunday meant a man would die, a whole different thing. On a Friday, it meant something foreboding was coming. I wrote this last night. Well, technically, this morning after midnight, so it was on a Friday." René talked quickly and floridly, like he always did, and Tommy ate up every word.
He scanned the page.
I am naked, only in my skin,
bare bark,
listening for storms
waiting for omens
Tommy couldn't get the naked part out of his mind.
"Come on," René said suddenly, snatching the poem back, "we have to get to the library."
Tommy watched as he folded the poem meticulously into a triangle, like he was folding a flag for a soldier, and placed the little parcel in the front pocket of his shirt. Then he hopped on his bike, and Tommy quickly strapped on his backpack full of books and grabbed his bike, too, pedaling hard to keep up.
They rolled down Freedom Avenue. Tommy let René go first so he could watch him from behind, his hair flying, white shirt billowing in the hot air. It was the beginning of June, the air was humid, and every yard they passed was dense with green lawns, sprinklers chattering away in wet stutters.
Tommy wrote poetry, too, but never as good as Renaldo's.
Except for the poetry he wrote about Renaldo.
About René's dark curls that cascaded down his neck.
About his strong nose and deep brown eyes that were so open and expansive, they were almost like staring into a night sky filled with stars.
About René riding his bike in his strange white pants and white shirts that he always wore, sometimes with an equally unstylish fedora hat, his bushy hair peeking out from under it.
About his brown skin, not one freckle.
About his body that was wiry and skinny and surprisingly strong, even though he never exercised.
About his old poetry books that he was always carrying around, along with his giant hardbound notebook that he wrote in constantly.
About the callus between his left index and middle finger that had formed because he wrote so much.
About how René wasn't popular but he didn't care at all. Tommy wasn't popular, either. That was for many reasons. But the big one: His last name was Gaye. And because life was apparently one giant cruel joke, he had always known he was gay, too. Last week he even said it out loud. He shut the door to his bathroom, making sure his parents and his brother were safely downstairs, and he looked in the mirror and whispered it to himself. I'm gay.
He muttered it quickly in the mirror so that he wouldn't have to get close and look at his pimply skin and feel even worse about himself. But now he was with René and they were on their way to the library and school had ended and he was free, flying down Freedom Avenue, and René was on his bike in front of him. He felt jolted with life.
Excerpted from Another Dimension of Us by Mike Albo
All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
Mike Albo delivers a thrilling transdimensional love story in what can best be described as The Breakfast Club meets Brit Marling's The OA, as five teens travel across the astral plane at different points in the past, present, and future of the rapidly changing Virginia suburbs of Washington, D.C.
Renaldo Calabasas may be the most talented writer Heron High has produced. But at the height of the AIDS crisis and amidst the homophobia present most everywhere in 1986, not many of his fellow students seem to agree. But something changes the night Rene is struck by lightning and only his closest friend, Katie, and love interest, Tommy, can tell he's undergone some inexplicable transformation. Meanwhile in 2036, Heron High students Priss and Gaye survive an ongoing plague called "The Virus" as they try to solve the mystery of what happened fifty years earlier in what locals affectionately call "The Murder House." At the scene of the crimes, they happen upon an old self-help novel that is effectively a guide to transdimensional travel. As bodies and minds merge and travel across the astral plane, the characters discover that they are not as isolated as they often feel and that the shadow chasing them all might very well be a reflection of their own darkest secrets.