Book Review: Order of the Dimensions

Title: Order of the Dimensions

Author and Publisher: Irene Helenowski

Copyright: 2012

Genre: Science Fiction

The author of this book, Irene Helenowski, contacted me through Book Blogs and asked me if I would be interested in doing a review of this book in exchange for a free copy.

When I was 8, I daydreamed often that I had a twin somewhere in the world. I’d imagine that when I brushed my teeth, she was brushing hers too. It was an 8-year old’s take on parallel universes. Theories about parallel universes and multiverses assum­­e that that each choice a person makes splits her world in two or more worlds – one universe existing where a person takes option A and another universe for option B.

If you’ve seen the movie Sliding Doors, you’ve seen the theory in action. In the movie, the heroine lives two different lives based on a single action (choice) of whether or not she catches a train. When she catches the train, she falls in love and is eventually hit by a car. When she misses the train, she breaks up with her live in boyfriend who she caught cheating on her. Two separate outcomes or universes created simply by the timing of a train.

Irene Helenowski manages not two, but many universes or dimensions in her story, “Orderof Dimensions.” The heroine, Jane Kremowski, is a physics grad student whose professor has created a machine that can take people to other dimensions. Jane secretly tests the machine after hours when her colleagues have gone home. In the main dimension, her parents are dead from a car crash that also debilitated her cousin. But when Jane jumps to other dimension, she finds that in some dimensions  her cousin is mentally healthy and that her parents are alive.

Jane’s dimension hopping is innocent play until an evil physicist, Dr. Zelov, learns of the machine and decides to use it to rule the world.  Jane attempts to thwart his mania.  A long drawn out struggle ensues with Jane and her friends bouncing back and forth through multiple dimensions hunting down Dr. Zelov.

The story’s premise has potential that could be achieved with better story structure. The story was hard to follow. Events often repeated without advancing the plot. The world building of the various dimensions is weak, deteriorating the story’s overall comprehension. 

With a little editing, the book could become an enjoyable guidebook for the do's and don’ts of cross-universal travel. String theory, quantum physics, neutrinos, and quarks are fascinating subjects because of their infinite possibilities of time travel and various life outcomes. In time, the theoretical physicists may morph into applicable physicists; a group is currently pursuing making time travel a reality. I’m holding on to hope. In my 5th grade school picture, I emulated Pat Benatar. 

Book Review: Clockwork Prince by Cassandra Clare

Cassandra Clare once again wisps us away to a Victorian London populated with werewolves, vampires, Shadowhunters, warlocks, and demons in Clockwork Prince, the sequel to Clockwork Angel. The pace is fleet-footed with conflict, discovery, and angst-laden romance.

The tale opens with Charlotte Branwell answering to the Clave's investigation into the bungled Magister affair. The Clave blames Charlotte for the havoc that the Magister inflicted on the Shadowhunter and Underworld societies (the events depicted in Clockwork Angel). To avoid getting the boot from her post as the Head of the London Institute, she must locate the Magister in two weeks. With the main conflict set, Clare wends us through over four hundred pages of mini-conflicts that end with a deeper love for the character's she's created and a love triangle that's predictable, but tolerable.

Will, with the help of the wittily sagacious warlock Magnus Bane, learns that demons can be pranksters. Bane calls from the another world the demon who Will believed had cursed him to a loveless life. Will's biting japes and cruel comments toward everyone who tries to be close to him are explained by the curse, or lack of curse in Will's case. Too late for Will though. While he was off being emo and an ass to all who cared for him, Jem, his best friend, was capturing Tessa's affection.

Tessa and Jem weave their hearts together at first in their concern for Will and his erratic behavior and then in their concern for each other. They share late-nights together as Jem divulges the history of his illness and Will's part in helping to keep him alive. The intimate evenings lead to intimate kissing, affection and adoration, and eventually engagement. The Jem-Tessa relationship is oblivious to the hubristic Will. Once Will understands that loving others will not result in his loved one's death, he declares himself to Tessa who in turn declares that she is engaged to Jem.

Ahh, the love triangle. A concept so played. Honestly, how many times in your life have you been at your wit's end to choose between the deep, thoughtful guy or the spontaneous, life of the party guy? I'm sure there are femmes fatales out there that this happens to, but can't possibly be as often as the heroines of romance tales, starting near the time of Lady Guinevere and persisting like a politician near election time into the present day. Nevertheless, the Jem-Tessa-Will triangle is the first I've encountered where each character has a deep regard for the other. I'll have to wait for Clockwork Princess to hit the shelves before seeing how the triangle collapses.

Another tidbit to learn in Clockwork Princess is Tessa's history. Her beginnings are still an enigma. She does find out that her mother was a Shadowhunter, but she has no idea where her powers come from or why she has them.

Smaller plot items include the eccentric inventor Henry emerging from his intellectual mist to support his wife in her time of extreme stress. The couple learns that they're expecting a baby. Clare also reveals that Jessamine, the reluctant immature Shadowhunter, married Nathaniel, Tessa's evil brother. And, a gap-filler for the Mortal Instrument series, Magnus and Camille were once lovers.

Clare has a gift for educating the young adult audience on the severe detriment of isolation on one's happiness and using story to demonstrate the important role of friendship, family, and community in a person's happiness. Series worth investing in!

Book Review: Hallowed by Cynthia Hand

Hallowed, the sequel to Cynthia Hand's Unearthly, flutters instead of soars. Where Unearthly had been a pleasant distraction from mundanity, reading Hallowed was a chore that had to be scratched off the list before I could go outside and play. Hallowed's writing is arthritic and the plot is immature.

Hand presents us the good and the evil contingents in the angel community; the good angel-kids versus the bad Black Wing angel named Samjeeza. And, that's the extent of the plot. There's a bad guy and he's scaring good kids. His threat is tenuous. Hand hardly births any details that would make the reader fear Samjeeza. She mentions briefly that the Black Wings aim to eradicate part angels from the Earth, but the reason is as ethereal as the angels themselves. The angel-kids shutter, cry, and quake in the presence of Samjeeza, but the reader is gifted scant understanding as to why. Even at the height of conflict (the size of an ant hill), when Clara confronts Samjeeza, Samjeeza appears less like the beefy bully at high school and more like the wheezing math genius who weighs 90 pounds soaking wet.

Then comes the love triangle – Christian, Tucker, Clara. Silky thin. Tucker and Clara who shared a summer of laughs and intimacy, who seemed destined for each other, are split by the mere fact that Clara will potentially live longer than Tucker. Ergo, she must be meant for Christian after all. That's it. They're both angel-kids; he's hot, she's pretty, voila soul mates. Even teenagers need more to keep them together than being modelesque and the same race. If you were worried about Tucker's feelings being crushed by his human lifespan, stop moping. Hand sets him up with Allison, a cameo character, at the end of the story.

I expected more from the sequel, instead what I received was a homework assignment to Hand from her publisher to carry the story further that received a C- in my grade book.

Book Review: Matched by Ally Condie

Matched by Ally Condie is a story with an aftertaste. For weeks after reading the story I contemplated the world that Condie had dreamed up and how life would be if her fiction was our reality. Condie's dystopian novel drags readers through a society that enforces personal restraint by removing the burdens of choice. Behavioral economist Dan Ariely mentions in a lecture on restraint that rules - religious, civic, personal – coral people into good behaviors (eating right, driving safely, etc.). Condie's fictional Society demonstrates the extreme of rules or restraints through the life of seventeen year old Cassia and mirrors what Ariely discloses - that restraints and their concomitant good behaviors often come at the sacrifice of personal freedom. The eternal questions are how much personal freedom should a person give up to live in a civilized society and who determines the definition of civilized?

Condie addresses these eternal questions by creating a society that statistically determines its citizens' nutrition, careers, mates, family structure, and lifespan. The society that Cassia lives in is aptly named the Society. The Society's intentions are ones universally embraced – healthy citizens, no crime, happiness. They have statistics that support their invasive intervention in their citizens' lives. Cancer has almost been eradicated and each citizen contributes to the communal structure. Cassia's world is partially enviable. How wonderful would it be if no one you knew suffered with cancer, if every person worked to the best of their ability, and most importantly, if a hot meal was prepared for you everyday, three times per day?! Just think, no cooking, in my house that means no smoke alarms blaring!

The utopia of never having to make a meal again tarnishes paragraph by paragraph with each squeeze on Cassia's freedom. Meals are delivered, yet Society has purposely organized the farm-to-table process to not allow any one person to be self-sustaining. Only select people know how to plant, others to harvest, and others to prepare food; the full process is an enigma to the Society's citizens. Every activity has been likewise dismembered; creating an efficient but dependent community. Further, all communications are minutely monitored. No one has paper for writing or creating. All writing is done via a keyboard and a computer monitor that is in the middle of the living space provided to each family. Thoughts are the only thing allowed to be private and even those have been influenced by evangelizing respect of the Society. Only 100 paintings, poems, and songs remain from the Society's salvaged apocalyptic past; a dearth of creative expression.

Cassia's belief in the Society begins to erode with the death of her grandfather; another controlled event. When its citizens turn 80 years old, they are put to rest for all eternity. Statistically after 80, all sorts of dreadful aging begins in earnest. Aging that the Society deems unnecessary. On his deathbed, Cassia's grandfather encourages her to think, to question; a mental exercise that the Society has gone to great lengths to prevent its citizens from doing. In a compact mirror case that he bestows to Cassia, he shows her a hidden compartment that contains two non-sanctioned poems, one of which is Dylan Thomas's “Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night.” He, and his mother before him, rescued the poems from destruction at a risk to their family's security and well-being. The import of her grandfather's risk and words prod Cassia to re-examine her assumptions.

Questioning authority directs Cassia toward doubting the Society's benevolence and its determined mate for her, her childhood best friend Xander. A rare computer glitch shows an alternative match for Cassia, Ky. The Society's attempt to suppress the accident vandalizes Cassia's naïve image of the Society. Her friendship and eventual romantic involvement with Ky exposes her to the odious, secretive actions that the Society is willing to take to ensure conformity. Cassia's final attachment to the Society's rules and propaganda are wrenched free when they ship Ky off to fight a pernicious war.

Matched is thought provoking, despite the, at times, stiff and droning writing. Other reviews reference Lowry's The Givers as a better read for accessing a similar dystopian story. Cassia and Ky's confrontation with Society's machinations continue on in Crossed, Match's sequel.

Book Review: Unearthly by Cythia Hand

Unearthly by Cythia Hand reveals the journey of a part-angel girl named Clara and her God-sent mission. Clara inherited her angelicness from her mother, her father is merely human. Each angelical, anyone with a touch of angel blood, has a mission to fulfill in their lifetime. Clara's mission is disclosed to her piecemeal in visions. The visions lead Clara, her mother, and her brother to Jackson Hole, Wyoming where Clara finds love, friendship, and ambrosial and earthly challenges.

Hand presents a love-triangle between Christian, Tucker, and Clara. Love-triangle's seem to be a staple of young adult fiction. I'm not sure if this a product of teens discovering the many facets present in one person or a fantasy that fictional characters must achieve. Rarely in reality have I known as many love-triangles as are found in fiction. Regardless, Hand develops the affections between Christian and Clara and Tucker and Clara well.

In Unearthly, Clara meets other teen-angels who are also struggling with their half-angel, half-human identities and with their divine destinies. The message is that no matter how bizarre and unique one's situation may seem, there's always another soul anguishing, enjoying, or otherwise along with you. Hand's characters demonstrate the solace of being with others like oneself and the strength that can emerge from the support of similarly-fated people.

Clara is not the perfect angel. She has a hard time learning to fly and falls in love with a boy her family suspects to be wrong for her. Clara's believable and yet, she's not the typical teenage female character – EMO, clumsy, awkward. Instead, she's confident and has a decent relationship with her mom. Kudos to Hand for realizing that not all teens are angst ridden.

Unearthly includes the “OMG, I'm magical” feature of young adult fantasy plots, but it's handled as one would expect it to be handled in the real world between a loving parent and their magical child, not as so often seen as an out-of-left-field surprise. In Unearthly, Clara's mom sits her down and tells her about her heritage as part-angel, much like the birds and the bees talk parents typically have with their adolescent children. Clara had already felt that something about her was different from other kids. Her mom's explanation clarified Clara's feelings in a supportive nurturing manner.

The failing in Unearthly is the weak development of the Black Angels. Hand reveals to us that the Black Angels are trying to kill off the part-angels. Flushing out the Black Angel conspiracy, could help readers feel more attachment to Clara and her lot and provide more anticipation in the story. Hand gives very little information on the Black Angels and the one prominent scene with the Black Angel is only window-dressing.