The 13th Reality

About The 13th Reality

Thirteen-year-old Tick Higginbottom is an ordinary, much-teased kid in Deer Park, Washington, until a mysterious letter arrives promising he can "become something extraordinary." Following its instructions pulls him into a network of parallel realities policed by an eccentric scientist named Master George and threatened by a villain named Mistress Jane, who is trying to unravel the fabric connecting the thirteen realities to remake the multiverse in her own image. Tick and a small band of friends recruited from across the different worlds have to master a strange branch of physics-meets-magic called the Fifth Reality to stop her, hopping between realities that range from near-identical to Tick's own world to landscapes governed by entirely different physical laws.

James Dashner wrote this quartet — originally published as The Journal of Curious Letters and its three sequels — before The Maze Runner made him famous, and it shows a gentler, more whimsical register aimed at a slightly younger middle-grade audience than his later YA work. The multiverse-hopping premise and puzzle-heavy plotting are recognizably his, but the tone leans toward adventure-comedy rather than the grim survival stakes of Maze Runner or Mortality Doctrine. The series was originally published by Shadow Mountain and later reissued by Simon & Schuster's Aladdin imprint under the shortened series title The 13th Reality.

How to read this series

Publication order is the only order and it's a single continuous story: The Journal of Curious Letters, The Hunt for Dark Infinity, The Blade of Shattered Hope, The Void of Mist and Thunder. Each book picks up Tick's ongoing fight against Mistress Jane where the last one left off, so there's no companion material or alternate sequencing to worry about — just start at book one.