Title Outcasts of the World Series Outcasts of the World Author Lucas Aubrey Paynter Cover Art Travis J. Wright Publisher Arm in the Wall Books - 2014 First Printing Arm in the Wall Books - 2014 Category Fantasy Warnings None Main Characters Flynn, Jean, Mack, Chariska, Zaja, Poe Main Elements Gods

Beyond the remnants of Earth lie many worlds, connected by pathways forgotten and invisible. They were left by the gods and have been found by Flynn.

A confidence man. A liar. A monster. Flynn has seen himself for what he really is and has resolved to pay for everything. Even if it means spending the rest of his days locked in Civilis, a tower prison for society's unwanted - "half-humans" gifted by the fallout of nuclear holocaust centuries past.

Jean, a prisoner in the neighboring cell, has different ideas and despite himself, Flynn finds himself joining her daring escape. After rescuing her friend Mack, the three flee Civilis as Flynn pieces together the hours before his capture and finds himself drawn to an abandoned facility where a rift to another world opens at his nearing.

Together they will venture farther beyond the stars than humanity ever imagined, find others like them that will never belong, and tangle with forces both ancient and immortal. They stand alone, hated and scorned - and the last hope of making things right in a cosmos gone terribly wrong.

Outcasts of the World may not have had the most unique premise (some down and out characters discover they have the ability to travel between worlds) but I must admit I've never read about a stranger group of traveling companions. There's our main character Flynn, a feral looking conman with fur, pointed ears and deadly claws. Jean, a woman who can generate earthquakes by placing her hands upon the ground. Mack, with a power never quite explained and I won't tell you what little we do learn as that would be a spoiler, but for all his innocent exterior, he's one of the sharpest of the bunch. There's Chariska, a priestess who not only lost her faith but maybe never really had it to begin with. And Zaja, a blue skinned-girl who can't handle the cold though she comes from a frozen land.

It was the odd characters that kept me reading because I have to admit I had some trouble getting drawn into the story, I had to fight a little to keep going, though I can't put into words what it was that didn't draw me in. Perhaps it was the initial aimlessness of the characters. When Flynn discovers they can escape a post-apocalyptic Earth by opening portals between other worlds, they take the opportunity to run. They weren't trying to get somewhere or accomplish a goal, they were just trying to run away. At which point the story became a kind of sight-seeing tour of different worlds but without real purpose.

One thing that threw me off was when the author would give names to the places the characters were wandering through, though the characters themselves had not been told. I was sitting there wondering where I missed the part where we'd been told about the regions, or if Flynn et all had been there before, or were they still on Earth and as such they knew the names already...

But I got more drawn in once they got some direction and Poe was involved. A sword-wielding psychopathic albino Guardian, he certainly stirred things up a bit.

And there is more going on behind the scenes than meets the eye, and unravelling what that is, and what place our hapless characters play in the grand scheme of things kept me going to the end and is tempting me to continue with the series to see how things sort themselves out.

While this is clearly meant to be part of a series, haven't seen any news about the next book coming out anytime soon.