World's End (Dormia Series #2) »

Jake Halpern is a journalist and author born in 1975. His book, Braving Home was a main selection for the Book of the Month Club by Bill Bryson and was a Library Journal Book of the Year. He is a contributor to NPR's All Things Considered and This American Life. He has written for The New York Times Magazine, The New Yorker, The Wall Street Journal, Sports Illustrated, The New Republic, Slate, Smithsonian, Entertainment Weekly, Outside, New York Magazine, and other publications. He is a fellow of Morse College at Yale University, where he teaches a class on writing.

When he isn't writing, Peter is a Foreign Serice Officer with the U.S. Department of State. Over the last ten years, he's lived in Israel, Haiti, and France. Currently, he is assigned to the U.S. Mission to the United Nations in New York. Peter attended both the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference and the Iowa Writers' Workshop and has published commentary in the International Herald Tribune. He lives in Brooklyn, NY.

Ever since returning from Dormia, Alfonso has enjoyed sleeping in a bed like a normal person. No more waking up at the top of a tree or the edge of a cliff. In fact,
no sleepwalking at all. But then, while visiting France on a class trip, Alfonso feels that strange and familiar pull of sleep. Upon waking, he finds himself in the belly of a ship headed to Egypt. In his backpack are a few old books and a vial of medicine he stole while asleep. Something is calling Alfonso back to Dormia. Perhaps it’s the Founding Tree? Or perhaps it's the man he sees in his dreams—the one who looks just like his deceased father? Whatever it is, Alfonso is powerless to resist.

Storytellers Jake Halpern and Peter Kujawinski take Alfonso on another fantastical quest to Dormia—and beyond—to a vast underground world that holds the answer to a terrifying message: Let me tell you of a dark shadow tree and the world's end.

VOYA

The second book of the Dormia series resumes the adventures of Alfonso Perplexon, Great Sleeper and now fifteen, who has been sleeping normally until he goes on a school field trip to the catacombs of Paris. There he falls asleep and finds himself in the midst of another quest. This time it is visions of his presumed-dead father and a strange hexagonal hole in the ground that spur him on to return to Dormia. Back in the company of his uncle Hill, Bilblox and his seeing-eye-wolf, and a now-beautiful Resuza, Alfonso is plunged into a mysterious journey on the underground Fault Roads in an attempt to find the Dormian city of Jasber on the trail of both the escaped Kiril and perhaps his father, Leif Perplexon. But as the friends near Jasber, they are separated. All find themselves in dire straits as the story closes, and the world above is likewise in danger. Halpern and Kujawinski develop both the characters and mythology of Dormia more fully this time, especially the older and wiser Alfonso. In the fine tradition of Tolkien and George Lucas, the authors spin a hero tale in the midst of a mysterious land where characters make difficult decisions motivated by myriad causes: vengeance in the case of Kiril, honor in the case of Bilblox, and family in the case of Alfonso. This second cliff-hanger tale of Dormia will delight fans of the first book and leave them chomping at the bit for the next installment. Reviewer: Mary Ann Darby