Beyonders book one by Brandon Mull

           This book begins out OK.  Jason gets hit with a baseball and doesn't feel so will.  He rides his bike to his job at the zoo.  Then the author talks about a few unimportant things, which slowed down the story.  Jason leans over the hippopotamus tank because he hears music playing, falls into the tank, and gets swallowed by a hippo.
           I thought it was confusing when Jason was swallowed by the hippo because it wasn't described will enough.  When I read that part it was strange, because he was in the tank and then all of a sudden he was in a whole new world.  I had to reread the paragraph to truly grasp what the author was trying to say.
            After the hippo incident, Jason takes about two pages to get out of a tree, and realize that he's in a whole new world.  He goes to the river where he had seen raft with magicians on it, and then follows a boy to the waterfall.  He tries to save the musicians even though they don't want to be saved.  Sadly, they end up going over the falls.
           I don't know, but I think maybe Jason should have felt worse about accidentally shooting a guy in the arm with an arrow, and not being able to rescue the musicians.  Jason just kind of seemed insensitive to the trouble he caused, and only focused on himself.  I also think that Brandon Mull shouldn't take so long to explain things in his book.  It really gets old, and you literally start to drift off to sleep because of too many long boring descriptions. 
           I did like how Brandon Mull made part of the story goofy.  In it there's a woman who lets a man steal from her because he refuses to accept charity.  There's also a man who creates impossible puzzles only for one person to solve them.  Then there's a blind king who lives in a mostly collapsed castle.  His servants pretend he has a grand castle, and that he's a great king, but he's really not.  He knows about the castle, he just plays along, making the servants believe he doesn't know.
           Another thing I dislike is that when Jason was at the Respiratory of Learning, the author told you what Jason read  in an unimportant book he read.  It made me start to fall asleep.  The author needs to work on making his book more interesting.  Besides the boring things the books fine so far.  I haven't gotten to the action yet.