I didn’t enjoy Reflex as much as I thought I was going to.
It was nice to revisit the characters of Davy and Millie several years down the track, but it didn’t really have a lot of substance to it.

Reflex is divided into two portions, basically Davy’s story and Millie’s story. Davy’s is all about him being kidnapped and Millie’s is her searching for him. Very basic and simple, each chapter alternates between these two for the most part.

There are some nice ideas in the novel along with some interesting locations, but it never really came to much.

I had to skip over a lot of Davy’s story with his kidnappers as it just seemed such a clichéd story (working with the people you hate and finding out as much info to get out…etc) and a vague powerful organisation calling the shots, who has ties to people he trusted.

Millie’s story could have been a rehash of Jumper (the previous novel), but it wasn’t, though it was curious how quickly she was able to get jumping down to a fine art. Millie as a psychologist sometimes felt a bit strained, some of the technical terms sounded like they’d been ripped straight from a textbook.

All up it was nice to have a sequel to Jumper, but I’m not sure if this is the book it should have been. It probably could have been played out through a variety of short stories or something, much of the novel felt like padding. Davy never seemed like he was in *real* danger, and Millie with her knowledge of jumping from Davy was never very unsure of herself.

All this said, I will be looking for Griffin’s Story as the ideas in the Jumper stories are sound and fascinating. ( )

Reflex proved an excellent read and satisfied my craving for more teleporting action after reading Jumper. I stumbled on to Jumper, the novel, in the bookstore after the movie came out, and enjoyed the novel, greatly appreciating NOT to have seen the movie. I ordered Reflex right after reading Jumper so that I could have them both read before I eventually rent the movie (that as I understand was not so good).

The action begins from the very first chapter and expands upon some of the characters introduced in Jumper, as well as introduces us to many new ones throughout. I thought the character development was better spread around this time, as opposed to Jumper really only developing Davy's character. I was curiously fascinated with the way Gould expanded on some of the ins and outs of teleporting through experiments conducted with Davy. When the author does that good a job with the action sequences and cliffhangers it feels like you are watching a big budget production seemlessly in your head.

I really enjoyed Reflex, the pace, the action, and the creativity of developing settings described in detail, but not get bogged down in overly descriptive language. I look forward to reading more of Gould's novels, and would highly recommend Reflex to anyone who even "barely" liked reading Jumper. It doesn't dissapoint. ( )

Although it took a while, it's a good thing that Reflex, the sequel to Steven Gould's Jumper, came along. The main problem with the first book, despite the appealing premise, was the lack of a plot-moving conflict until late in the story. Reflex redeems the series (can it be called that?) by getting the action started very early on and the book thrills almost until the last page. Like the first book, Gould spends a considerable amount of time on speculation and experimentation concerning Davy's teleportation ability, but unlike Jumper, it doesn't become the main concern of the book.

Reflex opens ten years after the end of the last book. Davy and Millie are married and the former is doing occasional work for the NSA, sticking to ethically acceptable missions. Davy is drugged and kidnapped to a secret location by a shadowy organization that appears to have great influence in political and economic affairs, and ties to the NSA. They chain him to a wall to prevent him from teleporting and implant a device in his chest that is used to both torture him and condition him to do their bidding. Gould does a great job coming up with a method for his seedy antagonists to stop Davy from teleporting away when unchained, and at the same time, forcing Davy to cooperate with them. The more you learn about the system, the more ingenious it seems.

Meanwhile, Millie uses her newfound teleportation power to search for Davy. Through contacts in the NSA, FBI and witnesses of Davy's kidnapping, Millie pieces together many clues that lead her very close to where Davy actually is and put her in danger as well.

Gould's writing in this sequel seems to have grown up along with his characters. Gone are the angst-filled moments that Davy frequently had in Jumper and the writing style is generally more reader-friendly and less cringe-inducing (Jumper was definitely Young Adult, while Reflex seems a bit more mature). For some reason, I particularly enjoyed that the chapters alternated between Davy and Millie's point-of-view. Whereas Jumper lacked any well-developed antagonists, Reflex has a few, most notably Hyacinth Pope, the femme fatale that kidnapped Davy and antagonizes him with threats of abuse and seduction. All in all, Reflex was an exciting read. The polish and development of this book makes Jumper seem like it was written solely for the purpose of getting Reflex made. Although I haven't seen the movie Jumper, it's pretty clear they made major changes to give the story a better plot and more action than the first book had. Instead of going to all that trouble, I think they should have skipped Jumper and made a movie from Reflex. It would have been more of a spy thriller than a sci-fi blockbuster, but there are plenty of moments for action and CGI effects (and it would have been truer to the source material). The experimentation with teleportation, the human element of Millie searching for her husband, the interesting baddies to root against and the solid plot of Reflex would have made a much better choice for movie adaptation, just as these elements made Reflex a much better book than Jumper. ( )

Teleportation disease is catching.

The main character from the first book, Davy, is drugged and abducted after his government minder is killed. An extremely ethically challenged group based around a company that gets involved in wars, political coups and other such things for business reasons wants him to use his power for them.

They make two mistakes, in that their testing of his abilities allows him to discover more ways to use his power, and the fact that his wife is now also able to jump after travelling with him so many times.

http://superprose.blogspot.com/2007/0...
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I discovered "Jumper" years ago in an independent bookstore in Maine, and of course it appealed to my love of the fantastic within the real -- like a teen-problem novel with teleportation.

Took a long time I was interested in reading the sequel. It's enjoyable. Fast-paced plot to while away a holiday weekend. Davy is snatched by a powerful, sinister organization bent on conditioning him for their own uses, but Millie has also learned how to jump, and as she works to find and rescue Davy, she becomes a target herself. The "twinning" technique is a great, imaginative extension of the teleportation premise, and I love those scenes where it's used. ( )