SHRRRRRRRIPPPPPPP. Nighttime. Castleton. It's dark and murky out when "the Rip" tears open the fabric of reality—and it's even darker when Ryoko Kiyama falls through it and into a strange and unusual world. But Ryoko soon finds that he's the strange and unusual one. This Mangaman is indefinitely stuck in our "real" world until...if Dr. Capeletti (a scientist working for the feds) gets The Machine up and running. In the meantime, Ryoko knows that if he ends up stuck in this strange, "real" world, he's got to learn to live in it—as the ultimate high school outsider. To make matters even more difficult, Ryoko's eyes turn to hearts for Marissa Montaigne—the most popular, beautiful girl in the school—who just so happens to have a very popular, very jealous ex-boyfriend ready to knock Ryoko's block off. Just as turmoil ensues in the "real" world, something dark and menacing lurks on the other side of the Rip, waiting for Ryoko. Will Ryoko get beaten to a pulp by some high school jock-rats? Or will the darkness from his own manga world get to him first?
Author
Barry Lyga is a recovering comic book geek. According to Kirkus, he's also a "YA rebel-author." Somehow, the two just don't seem to go together to him. When he was a kid, everyone told him that comic books were garbage and would rot his brain, but he had the last laugh. Raised on a steady diet of comics, he worked in the comic book industry for ten years, but now writes full-time because, well, wouldn't you? The Astonishing Adventures of Fanboy & Goth Girl is his first novel. Unsoul'd is his latest. There are a whole bunch in between, featuring everything from the aftermath of child abuse to pre-teens with superpowers to serial killers. He clearly does not know how to stick to one subject.
