The Fold - Peter Clines Book Review

Step into the fold.

 It's perfectly safe. 

The folks in Mike Erikson's small New England town would say he's just your average,  everyday guy.  And that's exactly how Mike likes it.  Sure,  the life he's chosen isn't much of a challenge to someone with his unique gifts,  but he's content with his quiet and peaceful existence. 

That is until an old friend presents him with an irresistible mystery,  one that Mike is uniquely qualified to solve.   Far out in the California desert,  a team of DARPA scientists has invented a device they affectionately call the Albuquerque Door.  Using a cryptic computer equation and magnetic fields to "fold" dimensions,  it shrinks distances so a traveler can travel hundreds of feet with a single step.  The invention promises to make mankind's dreams of teleportation a reality.  And,  the scientists insist,  traveling through the door is completely safe.  Yet evidence is mounting that this miraculous machine isn't quite what it seems --and that its creators are harboring a dangerous secret. 

As his investigations draw him deeper into the puzzle,  Mike begins to fear there's only one answer that makes sense.  And if he's right,  it may be only a matter of time before the project destroys...everything. 

~*~My review~*~

 

I  love science fiction, but I am getting tired of space war books.  The Fold is a near future US-based mystery.  The hero is a genius with eidetic imagery, and the book does a fantastic job of bringing him to life.  Multiverse theory is also a big part of this book, and handled very well, showing the implications of bridging alternate realities. There's some swearing and some sex and some desperate fighting, that some might not like. Mostly, it's about science and a gifted team figuring out and dealing with a huge mystery in a high tech secret government project. For those wanting to read more, this appears to be a side-quel to other work by the author, but also works very well stand-alone. I really recommend The Fold! ~Summer

I got the book from bloggingforbooks.org 

The Mapmaker's Children

From the New York Times bestselling author of The Baker's Daughter, a story of family, love, and courage

When Sarah Brown, daughter of abolitionist John Brown, realizes that her artistic talents may be able to help save the lives of slaves fleeing north, she becomes one of the Underground Railroad’s leading mapmakers, taking her cues from the slave code quilts and hiding her maps within her paintings. She boldly embraces this calling after being told the shocking news that she can’t bear children, but as the country steers toward bloody civil war, Sarah faces difficult sacrifices that could put all she loves in peril.
   Eden, a modern woman desperate to conceive a child with her husband, moves to an old house in the suburbs and discovers a porcelain head hidden in the root cellar—the remains of an Underground Railroad doll with an extraordinary past of secret messages, danger and deliverance. 
   Ingeniously plotted to a riveting end, Sarah and Eden’s woven lives connect the past to the present, forcing each of them to define courage, family, love, and legacy in a new way.


I began reading with eager anticipation. This novel alternates between a contemporary storyline and the historical one that revolves around Sarah Brown.  I was disappointed that every chapter alternates with the contemporary storyline and the contemporary protagonist is such a unlikeable character that I began to dread those chapters.  I also didn't care for the precocious neighbor child who acts far to old and knows too much to be a realistic character!

I wish the author had focused solely on the life of Sarah Brown because the contemporary storyline spoiled what might have been a decent book of historical fiction.

I got this book from bloggingforbooks.org