Quests of Shadowind: Sky Shifter

In Miller's complex novel, first in a planned eight-book series, 15-year-old Logan Oakes and his younger sister, Mindy, awaken one morning to many surprises: they are in someone else's house (and pajamas), the world's adults have vanished, and giant mechanical insects, "anibots," appear and kidnap their older friend Preston. When the siblings discover that they can enter a virtual world through the computer, they work together to solve numerous puzzles, in hopes of acquiring the Staff of the Sky Shifter before the evil Lord Torrent and his Spirit Beast computer virus (or local bully Kyle) find it and destroy both worlds. While Miller's many action sequences are suspenseful, the premise is complicated and the characters undeveloped. The plot branches out into too many story lines, the narrative hopping between players on all sides, with plodding and explanatory prose ("[Torrent] would get what he wanted by ridding himself of the meddlesome, goody-two-shoes Logan and by manipulating a computer program and then governing Kyle"), and the story often loses its focus and steam. Ages 12-up.