Review by Frank Plowright

The idea of socks as comedy characters for children isn’t one that many would have followed through, but brothers Shidan and Roshan Youssefian endowed Into the Sock-Verse with charm. Readers became invested in Freddy’s search to find his twin Peter. He made friends, and they journeyed to the Sock-Verse, which is where all missing socks end up, but hasn’t found Peter, not least because the Sock-Verse is a big place. Among the sock society there exists the legend of the Dial of Desire, a mechanism to guide any sock to their greatest wish, and that seems just the route for Freddy.

As before, Freddy’s search for Peter is a way to explore sock-related ideas, and there’s more mileage in that than most might think, from the shoe-shaped diner where the main characters work to a society exclusively for baby socks, as they go missing more than any other. That’s a place called the Pinky Toe Kingdom, ruled by Queen Polly Esther, which is as good an indication as any at the level of the jokes.

Mahui Duque’s simply drawn art is expressive in bringing the socks to life and providing a variety of designs. The assorted landscapes are well conceived, from the excess of pink surroundings in the Pinky Toe Kingdom to the assorted dangers within the Iron Mountain. Visual clues and visual jokes are necessary, and duly supplied, but with restraint.

The cast are there as part of a quest. In order to access the Dial of Desire they first have to retrieve the Pinky Toe’s stolen city symbol, and Freddy, Hanks and Ruffles aren’t the only ones looking for it. The Yousseffians return some familiar faces from the first book and introduce a fair amount of new characters ranging from the boastful warrior to the mysterious and plain bad sneak, and they’re all mixed into a long adventure with plenty of funny moments and plenty of surprises. The dangers are inventively conceived, and equally inventively overcome.

By the end our heroes have made a new friend, and against all the odds Life Really Socks looks to be a series with legs, and there seems to be more to come.