Regression

I have waited a week after reading the book Regression, before I drafted this brief review. I usually write a review immediately after finishing a book, but this book left me with a sense of anticipation, which meant it has taken me a while to think through my reactions. Thank you for letting me receive an early copy. The small Canadian publisher, Northern Sanctum, should be pleased with this book from a new writer.
Overall I enjoyed this book, but I also have some mixed feelings. On the one hand, it is an easy read, the writer holds your attention because you want to discover what it is all about. On the other hand, some of the twists and the preoccupation with self of the main character are annoying.
The storyline is strong and the show more connections between characters are well thought out. Some of the explanations for why things are happening seem overdone. The main character also seems to be somewhat void of emotions which turned me off.
I wonder, if the sex was cut out, would it make a better book for teenage girls? I think its worth reading, so give it a go. The next installment is due out in October 2010. show less

Regression, by Kathy Bell

A rabid fan of tales about dystopian societies and apocalypse, I found both with Regression, the first book in a three-part series called Infinion. Our tale begins with a bang; we are immediately given tantalizing scintillas of information, suggesting cataclysm on Earth, mad scientists, and my favorite sci-fi art, a General Screwing Around With Physics. Now, when I
discover a new author I'm reading is going to be Screwing Around With Physics, I'm immediately put on guard; will she be conservative in her use of rigorously defined terms? Will he embarrass himself and the sci-fi genre? While Kathy's goal with Regression isn't a hard sci-fi novel, I
was relieved and grateful that her General Screwing Around With show more Physics throughout the book was successful: trenchant to the overall story, well-studied, and crafted not to fly flagrantly against currently known physical laws. In the vein of Ursula K. LeGuin, Linda Nagata, and others,
Bell proves that women can understand and successfully employ hard science; a talent that is certainly at a premium in the industry.

The story involves a handful of sub-plots progressing at the same time. This is handled adeptly by Bell, and the sub-plots continually morph effortlessly from parallel story lines to convergence, and back again. Just when you think that, certainly, what just happened could not fit evenly into the story line... it does.

Ms. Bell's challenge will be to enrich her character dialog. There were many times during Regression in which I found the conversation between characters to be stilted, predictable, and cliche. Despite decent
character development, the dialog issue threatened to banish the characters to unidimensional knock-offs. Luckily, this threat wasn't realized, and I see huge improvements in Evolussion.

Kathy Bell is a masterful storyteller; almost against your will, you're compelled to read this book. You really, *really* want to find out what happens; not only to Earth, but to the characters you've grown fond of. Regardless of any faults you may find (which are few), this book is the
equivalent of a grand and intricate campfire story, that immerses one into an alternate reality that doesn't malign the reader's intelligence.

In summation: Hurry up with the third installment, Kath. :) show less

Mystery surrounds Adya Jordan. She may look like a forty-year-old wife and mother, but her past holds a deeper, and much longer story. This story begins its revelations when her car is struck by another in a traffic accident and she awakens in the hospital. But she finds that she is now fourteen years old. Struggling to discover why she is young again, catapulted back to her younger days, she explores her world and journals her memories.
Telling all of her experiences would ruin the surprise! Suffice it to say that she finds a home in a company called Three Eleven. The leaders of this company are just like her, sent back from the end of a different lifetime, but all male. The company, nonexistent in the reality she remembers, is bent on show more discovering a great and cataclysmic mystery, occurring on November 11, 2011, unless they can all find out what it is and prevent it.
This story took me less than two days to read because it was so well-written! Events flowed seamlessly and one adventure lead to the next. I was always wondering what would happen on the next page. The concept of the cataclysm and its solution was fascinating, and Kathy Bell thought a lot about every aspect of the scientific approach to preventing the end of the world. She also threw in a dash of magic with the supernatural occurrences witch drove Adya toward salvation.
The character of Adya was loving and emotionally real, but I think it was a mistake for the author to create her with no flaws. Adya never made a gross error. She had no idiosyncrasies. Not only that, but she always knew everything and was always right. If it weren't for her warmth, I would have disliked the character for being a preachy know-it-all. The only thing that saved her for me was her fervor for humanity, her fellowmen, and her own children. She would have been one of my favorite characters ever if she had managed to get dressed down or say the wrong thing. Heck, if she hadn't known everything about everything all the time that would have done it. She didn't even burn the steaks at her barbecue! Toward the middle of the book I wanted to put a frog in her bed or tie her shoelaces together or something. A feeling of sympathy for her faults and a sense of shared humiliation would have made me love Adya Jordan.
That was really the only thing I would change about this book! Adya was still a pretty awesome lady and the story was a super-duper page-turner! I really appreciated the classiness with which Kathy treated the more intimate moments of the plot, too. Sexiness was preserved but trashiness was not included.The action was well-timed and the plot was smooth as butter.
Now I really need to get the next book, Evolussion! You will too if you read Regression. Just do it. You know you want to! show less

The story is very unique and will definitely keep you reading!! A group of people are sent back to an alternate timeline to stave off the inevitable disaster in the future. Adya doesn't seem to fit into the group of regresses at first, but soon becomes a very important figure for the future.

Some scenes were unnecessarily awkward and I felt that the actions scenes were hurried though. Didn't get me as excited as I felt they should.
The characters needed more individuality. I felt that they were all basically the same character just with a different name (except Adya).
And Gil Bates? Really?

I'll definitely be looking for the sequel in the future!!!

Yeah. No.
I couldn't finish this. And I tend to finish most books that aren't downright terrible. This one isn't terrible I guess... it's just... boring. It could be that I don't accept the underpinnings of it - if you have children, one of them being a baby, and a husband and then wake up as a 14 year old back in your former life, you're not going to just bop along as if everything is fundamentally okay and only have the occasional thought or two about your children and life you had before.

We behave like 14 year olds when we are 14 because our brains are only 14 at that time. Once you've matured, those things that were traumatic and angst filled and "my one true love" when you were 14 are comical.

Popping back into your 14 year old self show more with your 40 year old knowledge base will most certainly make it impossible to live again as a 14 year old... show less

In this first book of the Infinion series, Adya Jordan, a forty year old woman and the mother of six children, wakes from a coma to find herself in her former fourteen year old body, her husband and children a far-off memory. She discovers to her dismay that she is in a different `timeline' and woke from an accident that she has no memory of. No one around her is aware of her regression except for the elite from the mysterious Three Eleven Corporation.

I was immediately taken with this novel when I read the blurb for it. This is the sort of science fiction that appeals to me. Part of that appeal stems from the `what if' factor. There are all sorts of questions that can't be answered, but are fun to ask anyway: What if I'd been born show more earlier than the year I was born in? Later? What if my parents hadn't met the day they had? Would they have gotten to know each other if they'd met another day? What if I hadn't gone to the same school as my husband? I might have met him regardless since I already knew him slightly through a mutual friend. Regression asks all of those questions plus many others I've never thought of before. The plot of this novel starts almost at the first page and the action doesn't stop. I enjoyed how the Three Eleven Company is portrayed almost as a living, breathing character and has a sinister, foreboding feeling to it. The author did a great job drawing the reader into the atmosphere of Three Eleven.

Adya is a very likeable main character. I think part of her attraction is that she does not make poor choices or (for the most part and in my opinion!) does not exercise unusually bad judgment. Nothing ruins a book for me more than a character who continually frustrates! So, despite looking like a fourteen-year-old, Adya displays the life experience and maturity of an older woman. I kept that image in my head while reading and found it an interesting perspective. She deals with all sorts of new situations and people - but what stuck out the most was the patriarchal and condescending nature of the big corporation.

The plot, action and characters of this novel do not disappoint. However, I think that the book could have used more editing. For a finished book there were a few typos that should have been corrected. Other than that, I really enjoyed this novel and plan on reading the next book in the series, Evolussion. Anyone who enjoyed reading Replay by Ken Grimwood or The Children of Men by P. D. James would also enjoy Regression. show less

Regression is a speculative fiction book that is accessible to people who are not already fans of the genre. It does not need to have muscle-bound barbarians or wavy-haired galactic princes on the cover, nor does it need minimalist art or any sort of Art Nouveau gracing the cover to appeal to readers who would normally avoid speculative fiction. The cover, as it is, says it all.

When Adya, a mother of six, gets into a car accident on the 11th day of November in 2011. She wakes up in a hospital, and nobody seems to be answering her questions, especially the big one: "Where's my baby?"

There is no baby. Adya is a 14-year-old girl, but she has such vivid memories of being a 40-year-old woman. It's her past, though, 1985. Things are show more different, but she can't quite place her finger on it.

When she gets into school, instead of seeing the clunk behemoths of computers that should have been there in '85, she's faced with sleek computers, a technology more advanced that should be in this era. These computers are a gift from the Three Eleven corporation. When using a computer, she is prompted, "What does Three Eleven mean to you?" To her, it's a date. The end of the world.

She's given a number to call, and given an internship to the Three Eleven corporation, a loosely connected series of ivory towers manned by individuals who have, like her, awoken in their past bodies with vivid memories of adulthood. They're all working on two things (a) to make the world a better place using 21st century knowledge, and (b) to prevent or mitigate whatever this catastrophe that happened/will happen in 2011.

Adya must find her niche in this sea of other regressees, all men, and prove her worth to them.

My enjoyment of this book was more during the first half than the second half. The plot took an unexpected turn, and I wasn't ready to turn with it. That may just be me.

Kathy Bell, the author presented several ideas, some of which I agreed with, others I disagreed with, and others I really had no opinion of.

She criticizes the hype surrounding global warming, which is one of those topics I have no strong opinion towards (though, for the past two years in Houston, it's snowed...).

She also criticized the use of technology for entertainment, which made her utopian future/past/thing seem very, very boring, and overly-repressive. Likewise, the group that wanted unfettered access to the technology were also terrorists, which didn't say much for the Maker/Open Source community in this alternate 1985. Because of these two factors, I felt that Bell's attitude towards video games (which have given us some cheap and easy training tools for various careers) is low, and her opinion of Open Source/If-you-can't-open-it-you-don't-own-it to be even lower.

Of course, she doesn't make it very clear that Three Eleven are "the good guys," while Anvolussion (the pro-free-culture anarchist terrorists) are the "bad guys," (though, they do cause some collateral damage and casualties), so maybe I'm wrong on her attitudes.

I thought the concepts presented in the book were interesting though, and it's comforting to see someone else take an interest in the Base-2 (computer code) to Base-4 (DNA) comparison I've been toting since college.

You'll probably like this book more if you already have an affinity for speculative fiction, but you won't feel alienated if you've never before picked up anything with space ships or dragons on the cover.

Regression is part of a larger series, and I, for one, do look forward to the next volume, if at least to answer the questions introduced here. show less