Gr 6-9 -Fourteen-year-old Jet Latter is not at all thrilled when her family and their Simulate Canine Deluxe, Otis, head to Ollywood, movie capital of their planet, where her oldest sister, Turquoise, will play Helenet's Third Damsel in Fall of Super Troy . Jet and Otis, who has recently missed his half-yearly service, are trying to escape the torture of the Ollywood scene when they meet Ben, who tells them about the strange world of the Subway. On their first trip down to the "Underworld," Jet and Otis are transported to Indigara, a world made up of bad actors, bad dialogue, and scenes from science-fiction pilots that were never made into series. While the premise is amusing, and seems to have potential for humor, the actors and dialogue from the B movies only make for a B book. The perspective jumps from Otis's "diskripts" to Jet's journal, to movielike scene descriptions, which results in a choppy read. Fans of Lee's earlier works will be disappointed, as will fans of futuristic science fiction or Hollywood stories.
—Kelly VikstromCopyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

Kid and loyal robot dog visit a confusing alternate dimension. When Jet's spoiled sister lands a movie role, their parents sweep the family off to Ollywood to be pampered in futuristic hotels. Sullen Jet and robot dog Otis explore Ollywood's underground subway, which features stores and roads as well as trains; people disappear there but nobody knows why. Jet and Otis narrowly escape a kidnapping attempt and are swirled off to Indigara, a world made up of "four [movie] pilots" that "have lain in Ollywood's archives and fermented like compost. They have come to life. And interbred." The people there are supposedly enacting an overly dramatic prewritten script; implausible events (like Jet breathing underwater) are explained away as special effects and "direction[s] in the script." Otis calls Indigara "the very spirit of all Ollywood. The great Invented Dream," but the physics between Indigara and reality-not to mention any deeper meaning or message-are muddled and unconvincing. Despite intermittently clever and funny narration, this sci-fi/fantasy hybrid is thinly conceived and awkwardly executed. (Fantasy. 10-12)