The Whisper: The Riverman Trilogy, Book 2

There's an overarching cautionary tale here about escape to fantasy worlds. Real life is a mix of joys and challenges; trying to create a world with no challenges (or people who challenge us in ways good and bad) keeps us from growing up. Can only good exist without something to counter it? These topics give readers plenty to philosophize about.

Not much of the violence feels very real since it happens in fantasy worlds or in flashbacks. The real people who create the fantasy worlds, however, can get their souls sucked out through their ears with a straw. It's not known whether they're gone forever or not. Monsters populate the fantasy worlds and attack, killing one real boy with an animal horn to his chest. Figment people are killed with blood everywhere. Stories of a boy hitting his head on a rock and dying, animals killed in a hunt, wasps stinging, tentacles suffocating figment people who are pierced with a quill, a wolf eating a baby, a bear eating an old lady, a girl who died of infection, and a kid getting beat up in a bathroom. Repeated talk of something that happened in Book 1: Alastair shot a gun and hit another boy in the stomach.

Rare strong language: mostly "hell" and "damn" with a couple "ass," a "b.s.," and one "brother-trucking."