Theatre of the gods

This is the story of M. Francisco Fabrigas, explorer, philosopher, and heretical physicist, who took a shipful of children on a frightening voyage to the next dimension, assisted by a teenaged Captain, a brave deaf boy, a cunning blind girl, and a sultry botanist, all the while pursued by the Pope of the universe and a well-dressed mesmerist. Dark plots, demonic cults, murderous jungles, quantum mayhem, the birth of creation, the death of time, and a creature called the Sweety: all this and more waits beyond the veil of reality. Tolkien and Verne meet Douglas Adams and Pratchett, care of Gulliver's Travels.