From the New York Times bestselling author of Ender’s Game comes Reawakening, the thrilling sequel to Wakers, following Laz as he uses his abilities to travel to parallel worlds and fight to save them.
Laz has already saved humanity before.
As a side-stepper, Laz was born with the power to jump his consciousness to alternate versions of himself in parallel worlds. He used this power to find a new home for humanity after learning his own Earth was destined to be destroyed. And he hoped his help would never be needed again.
But now he’s being called on once more to use his powers to change the course of history. This time, it’s not just the fate of the world at stake—but many worlds.
And only Laz has the ability to stop the coming interdimensional war from consuming them all.
The series
In a world where identity is no longer bound by a single timeline, The Side-Step Trilogy bends reality into a question: what if every version of you still existed—and you could take their place?
Read full series description
This quietly mind-bending series begins with Wakers, where teenage Laz discovers he can "side-step" into alternate versions of himself in parallel worlds. It’s not a flashy superpower; it’s a terrifying escape hatch—one he pulls only when life becomes unbearable. But when Laz wakes up in a cloning facility surrounded by hundreds of motionless copies of himself, the rules of his ability, and the very nature of his identity, begin to fracture.
As the trilogy unfolds, it doesn't just leap across dimensions—it digs deep into what makes a person whole. Each book builds on the unsettling tension between autonomy and design, freedom and fate. In Reawakening, Laz confronts the consequences of tampering with timelines, not just for himself, but for the fragile, overlapping realities he's begun to unravel.
What makes the trilogy so compelling isn’t just its multiverse premise or speculative science fiction edge—it’s the haunting quiet between the chaos. The loneliness of a boy who doesn’t know which version of himself is real. The ethical unease of borrowed lives. The slow realization that some doors, once opened, can’t be closed again.
With the precision and psychological weight readers expect from the author of Ender’s Game, this series trades space battles for internal ones, asking not how far we can travel, but how far we’re willing to go to escape ourselves. The Side-Step Trilogy isn't loud—but it lingers.
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