One night in Austin, Texas, a nine year old boy called Miles settled down in his apartment, ready for bed. Little did he know, that when he woke up he'd be in a completely different world. A world that is full of magical kingdoms. The kingdom that Miles ends up in is in the middle of a civil war, torn into two.

Miles is suffering with many different troubles at home, he is grieving for the loss of his grandmother, his parents are having a divorce and he struggles with the constant worry of catching germs and touching dirt (this is something that Travis writes about with care, as someone that has gone through problems like this I felt like this was written well and wouldn't trigger any problems for other readers).

Miles is thrown straight into the middle of the Rompu, a magical kingdom that is in experiencing a massive feud between the king and queen, after the king summoned up a deadly beast from another world using magic from an old book.

Slowly but surely, Miles discovers that in this new world, he has the ability to use magical powers. Powers that can not only protect him and his friends, but can injure and even kill those who threaten to hurt those that he cares about.

Miles makes a number of new friends. To begin with, everyone was scared of him, they had never seen a human boy before. But after discovering that he is in fact just like everyone else (just without the green skin and wings), they all took care of him and were in awe of his powers.

Even though Miles becomes accustomed to this new world, he is still desperate to go back to his home in Texas. When an opportunity arises for Miles to return home, he does everything that he can to see that through.

A lot more happens in this book though, it is full of action, drama, magic and chaos. There really wasn't a dull moment.

I loved everything about this book. The combination of this magical world and Mile’s struggle to cope in the real world is really clever, and very well done. The two threads integrate perfectly, somehow without any confusion or interference with the adventure. To begin with, it felt a lot like a children’s story, but as it went on it dealt with some quite complex topics so I wouldn’t limit it purely to a young audience.

I particularly liked that none of the characters (except the veratt) were intrinsically evil. Although there did appear to be a good side and a bad side, Miles got along well enough with both and that was a really nice touch (and very clever as it reflected the split between his parents). The cover art was also very helpful as it made it easy to clearly picture what the different ‘species’ of characters looked like.

Basically, I really liked it.