Indigara: Or, Jet and Otis Conquer the World (review)

Fourteen-year-old Jet has no interest in being dragged along to Ollywood (the movie capital of her world) while her sister pursues her movie-star dreams. Unfortunately, no one asked Jet, and so she and her remarkably lifelike robot dog, Otis, find themselves neglected and disgruntled while her parents and sister hobnob with the filmmaking elite. An exploratory journey into a mysterious subway sends Jet and Otis into a parallel world that is a bizarre conglomeration of four rejected fantasy and science-fiction movie pilots. Even though they are surrounded by B-movie dialogue and trite plot twists, Jet's dry sarcasm and Otis' quick wit serve the pair well as they inject their own revisions into the movies and find a way back home. The ridiculous contrivances of the rejected movies (complete with awkward costuming, overblown landscapes, and endless character stereotypes) are hilariously accurate, and they make Indigara, the land of reject films, quite memorable. Unfortunately, while Jet and Otis are away, the plot bounces between their adventures and the destructive actions of their replacement doppelgangers, whose presence is underexplained and superfluous in such a trim self-proclaimed novella. In addition, Jet's temporary pique (and Otis' sturdy contentment) hardly seems equivalent to the true desperation supposedly needed to jolt humans into Indigara. All the same, those seeking a quick-paced science fiction read will find this quest of a girl and her dog trying to get back home an amusing way to spend an afternoon.