IMAGINALIS

Veteran comic-book writer DeMatteis tries to make a middle-grade fantasy out of the naked desire of so many youngsters to live in the books they love. Mehera is 12, and she loves the Imaginalis series more than anything, refusing to accept that its reclusive author will not write the final book. It turns out that Imaginalis is real, and only the impossibly good Mehera can save it and the characters she loves: handsome Prince Imagos, Lord Nossyss (a Ganesh-like character with an elephant head), Prognostica (who can see many futures but doesn’t always know which one will happen) and the eeee-villll Pralaya, who morphs from globby blob to unctuous male to terrifying female. If Mehera believes strongly enough in the Unbelievable Bridge (an IM: “We’re trapped, Mehera...Only the Bridge can save us”), those from Imaginalis can come into her (our) world, find the writer of the series and save their land from extinction. Mehera’s first-person narrative sounds like a middle-aged adult’s notion of a 12-year-old girl, and the plot’s all over the place, with huge swaths of exposition plunked down everywhere. Ho. Hum. (Fantasy. 8-12)