The Extraordinary Disappointments of Leopold Berry Summary: Magic & Misery Collide!
TL;DR: The Short Version
Leopold Berry is a grieving, self-doubting seventeen-year-old who learns that Sunder—the world from a forgotten 1990s fantasy series—is real and layered directly over Los Angeles.
- He fails the official test to become a Channeler and is banished from Sunder.
- The memory wipe used on him does not work, and his best friend Emmet is left mentally regressed by the same spell.
- His late mother left an enchanted street atlas and a scavenger hunt across the city.
- The hunt ends with a golden focuser locked to his chest and, finally, his father’s old wedding ring.
At its core, the book is about grief, a mother’s legacy, and a teenager who stops waiting for permission to matter.
Who Is This Book For?
The book suits readers of young adult urban fantasy and portal fantasy, particularly those drawn to hidden worlds layered over real cities.
It fits readers interested in grief and family legacy as story engines, and in protagonists who are not chosen by prophecy. The narrative moves at a fast, linear pace with a mystery structure and escalating stakes.
The tone blends 1990s VHS nostalgia with contemporary Los Angeles, mixing wit and melancholy. Content includes parental emotional abuse, bereavement, fantasy violence, and a monster attack.
The Extraordinary Disappointments of Leopold Berry Summary
Spoiler warning: the following section covers the plot in full, including the ending.
Leopold “Larry” Berry lives in Los Angeles with his father, Richter Berry, a wealthy self-help author who wrote Think Like a Winner.
Richter belittles his son constantly and dismisses the memory of Leopold’s mother, Monica, who died of cancer five and a half years earlier.
Leopold measures her absence by the 7,261 miles on her rusted 1991 yellow Volvo, which he calls Bessie.
After Monica’s death, Leopold found seven VHS tapes of an obscure 1990s show called Max’s Adventures in Sunderworld. He and his best friend Emmet Worthington made fan films inspired by it for years. Leopold also suffered “dissociative episodes” in which he believed he was seeing into Sunder, though he eventually wrote them off as grief.
During a career counseling session, Leopold spots a raccoon whose tail catches fire. That night, driving down Sunset Boulevard, he brakes for a phantom red streetcar. Richter abandons him in traffic and threatens to scrap the Volvo.
Leopold meets Emmet and Emmet’s girlfriend Mika at a punk venue, then joins them for late-night coffee at Clifton’s Cafeteria. On his menu he finds a blue ballpoint Kilroy drawing—a private symbol he shared with his mother. Menu item #24 reads “Go upstairs, Leopold.”
Upstairs, he follows a glowing cord to an old animatronic display. The flaming raccoon appears, drops a brass token, and vanishes. Emmet notices the skyline behind Angels Flight looks impossible.
Leopold drops the token into the trolley switch panel, and Angels Flight carries them through a dimensional veil into Sunder Hill. They arrive in a floating art-deco city where buildings hover and shops sell spell focusers.
A guide named Art directs them to the Tumbleport Station and the Brite Spot diner, where a girl in a dark green cloak watches Leopold.
At a shop called 99 Spells, Leopold buys a cheap plastic “Funcast” focuser and a levitation filter. In an alley, he walks up a brick wall with unsettling ease.
Sirens sound as screens broadcast Executive Angela Ramirez announcing a search for a rare Channeler to ease an Aether drought. Convinced by Emmet, Leopold calls her private line, and a driverless limousine takes them to the Department of Cinemagical Production.
On Stage E, Ramirez tests Leopold against a live Noxum monster that sheds a human janitor skin suit. His cheap focuser fails, his spells sputter, and the monster breaks Emmet’s arm. Leopold saves Emmet by stabbing the creature with a piece of a broken lunch tray.
Ramirez tells him he failed. He used physical force instead of magic, showed no conviction, and scored as “remarkably unremarkable.” Leopold is banished from Sunder, and agents cast a memory-revision spell.
Leopold wakes in his own bed remembering everything. Emmet’s revision worked perfectly, however, and Emmet believes they only got drunk. Richter has already sent the Volvo to Tiny’s Scrap and Tow to be crushed.
When Richter insults Monica, Leopold’s rage cracks the ceiling and triggers indoor rain in his bedroom. He packs a bag, steals the Volvo back through the tow yard gate, and drives into the hills.
Under the passenger seat he finds his mother’s spiral-bound Thomas Guide atlas. A Kilroy drawing sits inside the cover, with an asterisk beside “Hollywood.” He realizes Monica left him a posthumous scavenger hunt.
At the New Beverly Cinema, he finds a Go Fish card hidden behind a magnet in the seat where they watched Bride of Frankenstein. In the Venice Canals, he fishes a vintage metal lunchbox from the water using fishing line and the magnet.
A former neighbor, Mrs. Morse, points him to the sycamore tree in his old backyard. There he digs up a lead-lined tackle box holding a note from Monica and a missing atlas page.
Reassembled, the Thomas Guide proves enchanted. Map lines glow, symbols shift, and a blue star tracks his position along a hidden route labeled “Hard Way.”
Leopold enters the Second Street Tunnel and crosses a mist barrier with help from two hustlers, Harney and French. He learns that footage of his failed test went public, and Sunder now knows him as “Lunchtray Larry.”
The atlas leads him to Goldie’s Rooming House on Bradley Street. Tapping his boot three times opens a trapdoor into the room of Isabel Alvarez.
Leopold retrieves a velvet box from a floor compartment. When Isabel draws a focuser on him, a flat gold object rises, sprouts six spikes, and suction-locks onto his sternum.
Isabel takes him to her uncle, Norman “Norm,” an inventor living at the Chateau El Royale. Norm heals Leopold with “brain salt” and studies the atlas, finding it enchanted five or six years ago with a rare 1930s Leica focuser.
Isabel reveals her parents, alchemists who died in a lab fire, created the chest object.
Meanwhile, Sunder’s botched memory revision is destroying Emmet’s mind. He regresses to age fourteen, suffers nosebleeds, and goes to Hollywood Forever Cemetery to shoot a fan film.
Wearing a pink cartoon-cat beanie as disguise, Leopold and Isabel set out to rescue him. At Jae’s Cash & Dash they dodge Detective Samuels using a fake Isabel clone, a wall-cutting limiknife, and a parking meter ladder.
They find Emmet at Johnny Ramone’s grave, disoriented and bleeding. Richter, Dr. Laura Worthington, the LAPD, and Sunder detectives converge on the cemetery, and a chase erupts across the tombstones.
Inside a Greek crypt, Emmet triggers an ancient tumbleport that sends him to Klovis Memorial Home in Inglewood. The machine then breaks.
Cornered against the Gower Street wall, Isabel spends her last Aether on a spell from a cheap plastic focuser and collapses from exhaustion.
Leopold steps in front of her and takes a lethal braided blue spell bolt to the chest. The gold object on his sternum absorbs the blast and shields his heart as he blacks out.
He wakes thirty-six hours later in the Sundered wing of Cedars Hospital. Ramirez visits to say the Sunder PD is dropping all charges, and memory specialists are coming to restore Emmet’s mind.
Emmet, now obsessed with puzzle books, walks to Leopold’s bed and treats the chest object like a mechanical puzzle. He twists its housing until it clicks and detaches cleanly from Leopold’s sternum.
The object shrinks to a tenth of its size and becomes a gold ring with a small green gemstone. Leopold recognizes it at once: it is Richter’s old wedding ring, which Monica secretly kept and enchanted before her death.
The ring is the artifact his mother led him across Los Angeles to inherit.
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Characters In This Book
| Character | Role |
|---|---|
| Leopold “Larry” Berry | Seventeen-year-old protagonist labeled “perfectly average,” who discovers latent channeling ability tied to his mother’s legacy. |
| Richter Berry | Leopold’s wealthy father, a self-help author who belittles his son and dismisses his late wife. |
| Monica Berry | Leopold’s mother, who died of cancer and left an enchanted atlas, VHS tapes, and a hidden clue trail. |
| Emmet Worthington | Leopold’s loyal best friend, who accompanies him to Sunder and suffers a botched memory revision. |
| Isabel Alvarez | A seventeen-year-old spark and orphan whose alchemist parents died in a lab explosion. |
| Norman “Norm” | Isabel’s uncle, an eccentric magical inventor living at the Chateau El Royale. |
| Executive Angela Ramirez | Head of Sunder Hill’s governing body, who oversees Leopold’s Channeler test. |
| Rochelle | A winged parking attendant who also runs a border checkpoint into Sunder Hill. |
| Art | Attendant at the Sunder Hill Information Post and Tumbleport Station. |
| Kaye | Waitress at the Brite Spot diner in Sunder Hill. |
| Tiny | Owner of Tiny’s Scrap and Tow in Culver City. |
| Mrs. Morse | Leopold’s former Venice neighbor, who witnessed Monica bury the tackle box. |
| Detectives Samuels & Bullet-head | Sunder Police Department officers who pursue Leopold and Isabel. |
| Dr. Laura Worthington | Emmet’s mother, a professor and doctor. |
Continue Reading: The Edge of Belonging Summary: A Story of Found Family
Books Like The Extraordinary Disappointments of Leopold Berry
Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs — Same author, with vintage nostalgia, quirky magical lore, and hidden worlds overlaid on the ordinary one.
The Magicians by Lev Grossman — Subverts chosen-one and portal fantasy tropes, showing that magic does not resolve grief or inadequacy.
Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman — Features a hidden parallel world beneath a major city, with its own rules, factions, and dangers.
The Hazel Wood by Melissa Albert — A portal fantasy where a dark story world bleeds into reality and a protagonist follows family secrets.
House of Hollow by Krystal Sutherland — Blends family tragedy, grief, hidden doors, and strange magic inside a contemporary city.
A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle — Portal travel and a young protagonist driven by family bonds into a dangerous otherworld.
The City of Ember by Jeanne DuPrau — A hidden society with its own infrastructure and rules, uncovered by young characters.
Book Snapshot
- Genre & Subgenre: Young Adult Urban Fantasy / Portal Fantasy / Magical Realism
- Core Narrative Tropes: Hidden parallel world, subverted chosen one, posthumous parent scavenger hunt, botched memory revision, enchanted relics
- Tone & Atmosphere: Nostalgic 1990s VHS aesthetic mixed with gritty modern Los Angeles; whimsical yet melancholic
- Primary Conflict: Leopold navigates Sunder’s authorities, evades arrest, and deciphers his mother’s magical legacy while confronting his own sense of inadequacy
- Pacing Style: Linear, fast-paced, mystery-driven with continuous escalation
- ISBN: 978-0593530931 (ISBN-10: 0593530934)
- Pages: 336
- Book Structure: 63 numbered chapters followed by an Epilogue; no formal part divisions
Ransom Riggs: Author of Hidden Worlds
Ransom Riggs is an American author and filmmaker best known for the Miss Peregrine’s Peculiar Children series, which began in 2011 and blends vintage photographs with fantasy.
His work often centers on misunderstood young people, obscure artifacts, and hidden worlds running alongside ordinary life.
The Extraordinary Disappointments of Leopold Berry is the first volume of the Sunderworld series, published in 2024. Riggs has also written standalone novels and nonfiction, and he studied film at the University of Southern California.
