5,0 sur 5 étoiles
A urban fantasy roller-coaster ride in today’s New York, with mind readers, Russian mobsters, kidnappings, murders, and betrayal
Commenté aux États-Unis 🇺🇸 le 1 juin 2015
This is a fascinating, fast-paced, urban fantasy roller-coaster ride set in today’s New York, with mind readers, Russian mobsters, kidnappings, murders, and betrayal. We first meet Darren, a 21 year-old genius of remarkable accomplishments. Graduated from Harvard at 18, works at a hedge fund, massive bonuses, the whole package. But Darren has a secret. We soon learn that although he’s smart and capable, his real secret to success is that he can stop time, enter a zone he calls “the Quiet”, and move around and inspect everything unimpeded, read secret documents, and look at the cards that everyone else is holding, both figuratively and literally, while everyone else is “frozen”.
Darren has been able to freeze time ever since he was a young boy, but he’s never found anyone else who could do what he does, until he meets Mira and her brother Eugene, who are hiding out in Brooklyn from another mysterious group. After resolving some initial trust issues, Mira and Eugene introduce Darren to a hidden world of new powers, where he can not only read minds, but travel through past memories of the “normal” people he joins within a “Coherence state”. It turns out that Darren’s abilities are much greater than Mira and Eugene’s, which may open up a new realm of possibilities.
Darren learns that there are two groups of people who have been in conflict throughout history, The Readers, people with mental powers like Darren, Mira, and Eugene, and The Pushers, who can plant commands in other people’s minds. The conflict between these two groups takes up the second half of the book, and is even more intense and extreme as we race to a dramatic conclusion. (Don’t worry, there’s more. There are three more books in this series.)
The first half of the book sets the stage with lots of action. Darren begins to learn who he is, and begins to put together some personal mysteries he’s been living with all his life. This world is deep and rich, and there is a lot of exposition, but never once is it less than engrossing and mesmerizing. You can’t help but wonder what surprise will Darren find out next.
The second half of the book is a mad rush of bad guys chasing the good guys who are then chasing the bad guys. There is even a mad car chase through the streets of Brooklyn, where our team has to use their mind-reading and time-stopping abilities to navigate city traffic, which only adds to the tension and suspense.
The author, Dima Zales, has created a very believable world of mind readers and mind invaders that exist alongside our current world, yet have a entire existence outside of it, creating their own society and pursuing their own agendas. This is an intriguing concept for a story line, and one that pulled me in right away. Even though this is a five-part series, this book can be read as a stand-alone adventure, although you will want to read the entire series. This is a great adventure urban fantasy series, and I will be reading all of it.
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