|title=Archibald Lox and the Bridge Between Worlds
|sort=Archibald Lox and the Bridge Between Worlds
|author=Darren Shan
|reviewer=Jill Murphy
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=A pacy and exciting story of parallel worlds into which our hero finds he can pass by means of a mysterious ability to pick invisible locks. Inventive and imaginative imaginative with plenty of jeopardy - as satisfying a read as we've come to expect from Darren Shan.|rating=4.5 5
Time to catch you all up with some of my lockdown reading - I've been doing so much of it that I'm a bit late to the party with actual reviewing. Oops! And where better to start than with the new series from Bookbag favourite, Darren Shan?
... and of course, dear reader, Archie goes through the portal, catches up with the girl, who is called Inez, and who tells him that he has found his way into ''The Merge'', something the Born should not be able to do.
Readers of Shan will expect pace and they get it. They will expect jeopardy and they get it. They will expect monsters and they get them. They will expect hair raising adventures and they get them. But ''Archibald Lox'' is a slight departure from Shan's previous series. It's pacy and exciting but it's not just a rollercoaster ride - there are quieter moments during which the reader can become completely immersed in the worldbuilding side of things and the monsters - in the first book, we meet the horrifying Hell Jackals - are as much spiritually terrifying as they are gore-mongers. Archie's first -person, present -tense narration allows the reader to maximise the impact of the strange new worlds contained within ''The Merge'' and to keep the pace going.
I loved this first book in the first volume of a planned series. Archie is a great central character - caught by adventure in a moment of personal crisis, he's thrown even more off -balance than he already is and copes admirably. Inez is drily humorous and in possession of truckloads of fortitude and courage. ''The Merge'' is described in loving detail - from its plentiful mushrooms, through its ghost villages and its rivers of blood to its power politics. And who could fail to enjoy King Lloyd, the king of glass teeth and ruby red slippers?I shan't let on any more else I shall spoil it. Suffice it to say that, of course, this one comes recommended by me!
If you haven't yet discovered [[Zom-B by Darren Shan]] and like a bit - well, a lot! - of gore, do give it a go. It's similarly pacy and exciting.