from BETWIXT
:
A young adult novel about a fantasy world gone wrong. Young James escapes a life of isolation and loneliness to find himself transported to a Peter-Pan like world, neither here nor there, but "Betwixt" all places. There he meets and joins a band of children who are its sole human inhabitants. All transported, like James, from our world aqnd from lives that will not miss them, they live to adventure all day without adult supervision or interference. Here they live, in a mystical, beautiful and savage world, populated by bear-like beasts with a venomous bite called The Flaze, and bizarre intelligent snakes with hands that seek to steal your life's breath.

And here, they can die, if they make the wrong move, or a wrong choice. But it's all fun and games, as every day "resets," and any child killed the day before is miraculously alive again, with "unlimited lives." Some, he discovers, have been playing this game for hundreds of years.

But shortly after James' arrival, things start to change. And children who have died, stop coming back. Suddenly the adventure is a real life and death struggle, and a mystery at which James is the core. He must solve the mystery, and conquer the world of Betwixt before it leaves him neither here nor there...but nowhere.