Michael Offutt

Hold on to your seats, I'm sure many of you will not have seen this coming. The average Mormon Girl reads and likes a book with gay characters. ;)

Let's break this down in to bite sized chunks.

The Science

This book is not for everyone. Michael does a wonderful job digging deep into the world of physics to explain what the slipstream is and how it works. I love this kind of stuff even though my mommy brain has a hard time keeping up with it. Perhaps this is why I love it. It gives me a chance show more to step out of my housekeeping roll and stretch my brain. Michael's science is what makes this book so amazing. It ties everything and everyone together.

Avalon (The parallel world)

This is where the story really started for me. Before this point I was interested, but not really invested. Avalon is gritty and raw and the technology and society so different from our everyday that I was hooked. The world building was brilliant. In fact, I kept comparing it to the movie In Time. Stay with me for a moment. They are completely different worlds, but both are built and depend on certain truths: 1. Who has the power? and 2. What is the real world currency?

In the movie it's time, in Slipstream it's the essence of life (green, yellow, etc.) The layers of society fall into place based on who has enough power to get it. The lower levels work on selling or stealing it. Plain and simply brilliant.

The Characters

It took a little while to get into some of the characters, (and then I think I liked some of the minor ones more than the main ones), but these are not your average stock characters. Each one is unique and well rounded. My favorite is Dylan with his puma familiar.

The Plot

Who doesn't love a quest to save the world? Two worlds even? The fact that the main character can use the slipstream to "see" and move through time to learn what he needs to is fascinating. He uses it to live through several unique circumstances. My only problem was they solve one problem and get the next quest in the last few pages. Now I have to wait to see how this team of friends is going to find the Black Tower in our world.

The Romance

The romance is simple but powerful. Two people looking to be accepted and loved for who they are. Isn't that what we all want in the end? I didn't read the actual sex scene, so no comment there. Don't take it personally or think its an act of prejudice, I skip all explicit scenes no matter what combination of body parts are in play. Just a personal preference.

If you don't want to read about an intimate relationship between two men, don't pick this book up. show less

This was such an odd book, such a weird clash of genres, that I’m still not entirely sure how I feel about. There are aspects of Slipstream that would definitely brand it as a YA novel, but then there are others that are simply too mature for such an audience. It is a very smart novel, and one with a fantastic premise, but the characters themselves, as well as some of the narrative phrasing, seems crafted to appeal to a younger audience.

Like the book itself, the main character, Jordan, is show more something of an ill-fitting enigma. He is an orphan, a family boy, a risk taker, an ice hockey star, and a full-blown math and science geek. Don’t get me wrong, it’s nice to see a character who straddles the stereotypes, but he seems a bit too good to be true. Without going into too much detail, he ends up discovering a parallel Earth that was all-but destroyed by the atomic bomb testing of the 1940s. Once there, he’s forced to join a sinister hockey league in order to gain information on how to defeat the evil soul-sucking (literally) corporation that holds sway over the world.

Maybe I’m showing my age a bit, but the narrative phrasing, with its emphasis on brands and brand-names, kept throwing me off, especially early on. I’m sure it rings true for a younger audience, and probably serves to draw them in, but it kept jarring me out of the story. The dialogue was a bit of an issue for me as well, coming across as a little too stilted and direct, at times, and a little to obviously hip at others, to sound entirely natural. That aspect did evolve as the story went on, as Offutt seemed to settle into his characters, but there were still occasions where the dialogue was used to info-dump on the reader.

On the other hand, the romance between Jordan and Kolin was exceptionally well-done, and provided a much-needed emotional core around which to build the story. It takes a while for them to come to grips with their feelings, much less to do anything about it, but I loved the slow burn of their intimacy. If you've ever questioned whether a gay teenager could pull off the role of romantic hero, Jordan does it. I wasn’t sure, at first, what kind of role would be left for Jordan’s sister to play, but Kathy is a strong character in her own right, and one who helps keep the reader engaged on a human level. She does slip a bit into the convenient damsel in distress mode from time to time, but she's definitely not alone in being put into jeopardy, and she is by no means a helpless young woman.

Like I hinted at earlier, the ideas and concepts here are incredibly clever, and the world-building is extremely detailed (even if a few elements did seem a bit derivative of other stories). I quite liked the contrast between the two worlds, and really appreciated the ways in which Offutt explored the different branches of society’s technological evolution. The spiritual, good vs evil elements were a bit too simple for my tastes, but the genre does often lend itself to the black and white, so that can be excused.

Overall, I admired the book a great deal, and liked parts of it a lot, even if the package as a whole didn’t completely work for me.


As published on Bending the Bookshelf show less

Hold on to your seats, I'm sure many of you will not have seen this coming. The average Mormon Girl reads and likes a book with gay characters. ;)

Let's break this down in to bite sized chunks.

The Science

This book is not for everyone. Michael does a wonderful job digging deep into the world of physics to explain what the slipstream is and how it works. I love this kind of stuff even though my mommy brain has a hard time keeping up with it. Perhaps this is why I love it. It gives me a chance show more to step out of my housekeeping roll and stretch my brain. Michael's science is what makes this book so amazing. It ties everything and everyone together.

Avalon (The parallel world)

This is where the story really started for me. Before this point I was interested, but not really invested. Avalon is gritty and raw and the technology and society so different from our everyday that I was hooked. The world building was brilliant. In fact, I kept comparing it to the movie In Time. Stay with me for a moment. They are completely different worlds, but both are built and depend on certain truths: 1. Who has the power? and 2. What is the real world currency?

In the movie it's time, in Slipstream it's the essence of life (green, yellow, etc.) The layers of society fall into place based on who has enough power to get it. The lower levels work on selling or stealing it. Plain and simply brilliant.

The Characters

It took a little while to get into some of the characters, (and then I think I liked some of the minor ones more than the main ones), but these are not your average stock characters. Each one is unique and well rounded. My favorite is Dylan with his puma familiar.

The Plot

Who doesn't love a quest to save the world? Two worlds even? The fact that the main character can use the slipstream to "see" and move through time to learn what he needs to is fascinating. He uses it to live through several unique circumstances. My only problem was they solve one problem and get the next quest in the last few pages. Now I have to wait to see how this team of friends is going to find the Black Tower in our world.

The Romance

The romance is simple but powerful. Two people looking to be accepted and loved for who they are. Isn't that what we all want in the end? I didn't read the actual sex scene, so no comment there. Don't take it personally or think its an act of prejudice, I skip all explicit scenes no matter what combination of body parts are in play. Just a personal preference.

If you don't want to read about an intimate relationship between two men, don't pick this book up. show less

While the author previous "Slipstream" was filled with a lot of wild stuff, "Oculus" is far more down to earth--probably because it takes place on Earth and not the parallel world of Avalon with all its far-out technology. This probably makes it more accessible for more casual readers than the first book.

Jordan Pendragon has returned with his twin sister Kathy from a stint in Avalon. He resumes his normal life at Cornell, where he majors in Physics and plays on the ice hockey team. At the show more same time he uses the supercollider at the school to study Antarctic ice samples in order to locate the "Black Tower" that holds the key to saving Avalon and Earth from the evil Shadow.

Then Jordan meets a young woman with a weird old stone called the oculus. A wacko religious group sort of like Opus Dei in "The da Vinci Code" also want the oculus, though for far different reasons. The battle for the oculus and its secrets ends up (appropriately enough) in Hell's Kitchen where Jordan and his boyfriend Kolin, his best friend Robbie, and his teammate Andy do battle against a bunch of demons who would be at home in a "Hellraiser" movie or one of the old Doom video games.

There might be a few too many eating, hockey, and snogging scenes for my taste, but overall the story is well-told. There aren't many mysteries wrapped up, just a few more pieces to the puzzle. As I said at the beginning, since this is mainly situated on Earth it's a little more approachable for more casual sci-fi readers than the first book; there are fewer alien concepts to grasp and far more familiar settings like upstate New York and New York City. Book 3 promises to be exciting as we get to learn more about Excalibur and Jordan's connection to it. So if you haven't already, you should definitely get into the series now.

That is all. show less