In the far distant future, humans have evolved to the point that the things they imagine can change either the appearance or the nature of reality itself.  It sounds amazing, but after a chaotic period of human history in which reality was distorted in many ways because so many people were changing the nature of it with every thought, the people realized that they had to settle on some mental limits in order to maintain a stable reality that they could all live in.  However, at the time the stories take place, not everyone is entirely satisfied with the standards imposed by the societies they live in.  Different groups also seem to have different levels of mental abilities and different standards regarding them.

In the kingdom where Princess Lenora lives, daydreaming is strictly limited because of the havoc it causes when people change the world around them.  Lenora in particular has a powerful effect on the nature of reality with her thoughts.  For a dreamer like Lenora, the limits imposed on her are stifling, and she longs for greater freedom to imagine and live out her dreams.  Prince Coren, the young man her parents have arranged for her to marry, is quite different.  In his kingdom, people only influence the apparent nature of reality, like appearances, but cannot actually change reality.  They live in dreams pretty much all the time, ignoring the realities of the world around them.  While Coren’s parents use their minds to live in the palace that they imagine with all sorts of finery, Coren prefers to concentrate on the reality of their situation.  Their palace is actually crumbling, and his parents are wearing rags because no one cares enough about reality in order to fix anything. (Although things do improve later in the series.)

Princess Lenora and Prince Coren seem like opposites in many ways, but through their adventures together, they discover that they balance each other well.   Although Coren doesn’t live in his daydreams like his parents, he has some unusual mental abilities of his own.  Like other people in his kingdom, he can read minds, which is something that Lenora can’t do.

I found the alternate realities of Lenora and Coren’s world interesting in the first book in particular, however I didn’t care much for the last book in the series.  Lenora and Coren are just about to be married in the first book, and by the fourth book, they still aren’t married (their various adventures causing their wedding to be put off), and the final book is one of those books where the-characters-step-into-our-world-and-are-amazed-to-discover-they-are-fictional-to-us kind of stories, and Lenore and Coren think our world is weird.  I think the first book of the series was the best.  I know that the whole series was about alternate realities and how thought can influence reality, but I think that it would have been better to let Lenore and Coren’s realities develop rather than bring them into ours, although there is an interesting twist to that book.

The world that Lenora and Coren know is influenced by the “Balance”, a force that keeps different realities separate from one another, and chaos ensues when the Balance is, well, out of balance.  The characters’ adventures involve restoring the Balance when it is disrupted, which brings up some interesting philosophical questions about control vs. chaos, freedom vs. restraint, what “balance” really is, how individuals find balance in their lives, and how societies find balance between the needs of individuals and the needs of society itself. There are rules to how Lenora and Coren’s powers work and how their societies function, but there is plenty of scope for the imagination to play in their world. This is a great series for people who like to imagine “what if.”

The books are by Carol Matas and Perry Nodelman.

Books in the Series:

Of Two Minds (1994)

Princess Lenora is unhappy about the marriage that her parents are arranging for her.  However, with her ability to change the nature of reality using only her thoughts, Lenora and Coren soon find themselves caught up in an adventure outside the reality that both of them have known, where their worse enemy turns out to be . . . Lenora herself.

More Minds (1996)

Strange things are happening all over Gepeth and in other countries. The Balance that controls their world and keeps it in order is suddenly out of balance.

Out of Their Minds (1998)

Lenora and Coren go to Andilla, where their wedding will be held, but people in Andilla are suddenly losing their powers of imagination. As the Andillans learn to cope with seeing themselves and their society as it really is for the first time, some of the secrets of their society are revealed and Lenora and Coren must once again deal with their old nemesis.

A Meeting of Minds (1999)

Lenora and Coren discover that they are characters in a book in our world. But, were they really a creation of our world or are we a creation of theirs? How did they get to our world, and how will they get home?