Revolver

Kindt takes a good idea and runs with it in this follow-up to his award-winning Super Spy. His main character, Sam, a born loser in the everyday world, goes to bed one night and wakes up in a postapocalyptic nightmare. But is it a nightmare? There, Sam is suddenly able to be the strong, decisive man he isn't in his real life. He helps found a revolutionary watchdog newspaper, murders in self-defense, and gets it on with the lady boss who always looked down on him. So when Sam wakes up back in the world he's always known, it sort of seems like that's the bad dream. Soon, Sam understands that he's destined to go back and forth between the two realities like clockwork every day and soon figures out how to use information gained in one world to his advantage in the other—and the id unleashed in the war-torn world begins to show up in the first. Kindt's use of ticker-tape news items at the bottom of the pages and alternating color alert the reader to the nature of whichever world we're in. A good concept is occasionally dragged down by heavy exposition, circular philosophizing, and cliché characterization (particularly of the female characters), but overall it's a thought-provoking foray into postapocalyptic mayhem. (July)