Book Review: Rainbow Connection

Hi. Sorry it's been a while, but I've had some other reviews to finish up. I picked up this from the author at a con in TN. a few months back. Rainbow Connection is a new short novel from Blackwyrm Publishing. It was written by Ian Harac who has prominmently worked on RPGs like D&D and GURPS. This is an interesting piece for anyone whose a regular goer of fan conventions, or stories involving alternate realties.

Matt Anders is a part of a special agency that deals in contraband from parallel universes. Apparently, in this continuity, travel between other dimensions is slightly common, although not totally known to the general public, and there's an underground network that traffics illegal items from other worlds to the story's main Earth, referred usually to as "Prime". But instead of being something like death rays from some robot universe, its the selling of unsolicited media to the geek market, like the missing 4th Season of Star Trek. So, basically Matt is an FBI agent tracking down bootleg copies of the Star Wars prequals from a reality where they actually didn't suck. This usually has him frequenting sci-fi cons in search of unauthorized nerd exports.


Matt tracks down a possible smuggler at a convention, but discovers a dead Munchkin in the man's apartment. This leads to him getting help from an interdimensional smuggler named Bobbi. She manages to get him and herself to Oz as her hideout is hit by the fuzz. Once there, they end up running into mad Tik-Tok knockoffs, spurned Munchkins, and cybernetic flying monkeys. They then manage to find their way to a depression-era version of Kansas in yet another reality. Matt and Bobbi eventually return to Prime where they confront the true mastermind behind the trafficking from Oz.

This was a fairly good story, which for my opinion should've played more of an emphasis on its wormholes into other worlds instead of it being an Oz-themed book. Oz fans might be a little miffed that there are none of the original characters from the books in this story, although it presents a slightly fresh take on Oz from a modern day outsiders point of view. I'd probably suggest getting the E-book edition of this as opposed to spending the extra cost of the paperback. But definatley look it up.