Back in 1993 I picked up Jumper, the first novel featuring Davy Rice. It had a queer-looking cover but I bought it anyway on the strength of the premise. Davy Rice is a teenager who learns how to teleport himself instantaneously from one location to any other location he has fixed in memory or can see. It was okay, other people liked it more than I did. Last year I read Helm by the same author and really enjoyed that one. And now Reflex continues the story of Davy Rice ten years later. (It's got a much less embarrassing cover too.) It's a fun read and an improvement over Jumper. This time some baddies figure how how to imprison a teleport and they capture Davy with the intent of conditioning him and using his talents for their own nefarious ends. But what no one realizes is that after being countlessly teleported by her husband over the years, Davy's wife Millie stumbles upon the ability to jump as well. And she wants her husband back. It's a pretty cool little story and a fast read. ( )

LIKED

Somehow more enjoyable than the first book (Jumper), Reflex is more the story of Davy's wife Millie and I think it's better for it. ( )

I read Gould’s novel Jumper earlier this year, and was quite impressed with it. There was a broad range of ideas regarding teleporting, a well-portrayed character with great character development, and a lot of good plot ideas regarding teleporting. Having enjoyed the first book so much, I knew I had to see what the sequel “Reflex”, was like.

In “Reflex”, our hero, Davey, gets kidnapped by a shadowy organisation that wants him to do some nefarious deeds for them, and have set up a system that prevents him from being able to teleport. While this occurs, Davey’s wife Millie finds out that she actually has teleporting powers.

It’s not a boring read, but to be blunt, it is no where near as good as the original novel. There’s the occasional idea in there, but it seems a lot less intelligent and varied than what the original novel was. I can’t ignore the huge coincidence of Millie finding out that she can teleport just as Davey disappears. And while I liked Millie as a character in the original book, here she simply comes off as a woman that will sacrifice her career in order to go and rescue Davey and have his kids, because she is worried about her biological clock ticking away.

That’s enough said about this book. 1.5/5. ( )

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. ( )