You need to read these 5 books

You need to read these 5 books

I want to share some thoughts with you on 5 books I read in 2020. I have read a lot more than just 5 books in 2020 but the 5 I want to review are all science fiction and you will notice that I mainly enjoy are time travel books.

**Spoiler Alert**

You may find some spoilers in these reviews so if you don’t like spoilers don’t say i didn’t warn you.

killing Adam

By Earik Beann

The first of the 5 books I recommend is Killing Adam.

Do you have a suspicion that your Google assistant or Amazon Alexa is trying to control you life? the Killing Adam will make you even more paranoid.

Adam is not a person like you or me, in fact he isn’t a person at all yet again he is everyone.

Adam in an AI or Artificial Intelligence, who was born through an experiment which involved tried to connect the consciousness of 4 people through the use of a chip embedded into the heads of the people. Gradually Adam was able to take control of the vast majority of people, or units as he calls them through technology.

Adam through the people he controlled created a Altered Reality Chips (ARCs) which became as popular as the smart phones we use today excepted people would live their lives in a virtual reality world but their bodies could be used in any way Adam wished.

The only people that could not be controlled and chipped by Adam were those who had suffered a brain trauma. Like Jimmy Mahoney who was “ARC-incompatible”. Also Adam had an enemy in a rogue entity called Trixie.

It was Jimmy’s job to save his wife from the dangers Adam has put her in and save the world from the control and domination of Adam with the help of trixie.

This was an excellent book with a unique storyline and plot. It kept me gripped right up to last couple of chapters.

I often feel that many books rush the ending. I would have liked to see a few more chapters to bring this book to a satisfactory conclusion.

It also felt like there was room for a sequel. Though saying that that I felt the conversation between crazy beard and a young girl with unusual intelligence may be a hint of a sequel.

Replay

By Ken Grimwood

Replay is a book about a everyday man called Jeff Winston. An ordinary man wife a very boring existence and disillusioned with his marriage. sounds drepressigng yes?

The story doesn’t start for Jeff until at the age of 43 he has a heart attack that kills him. that is when the story begins.

Jeff is thrown back in time into his 18 year old body in which he begins his life again, this time living it differently, making different choices right up until he reaches 43 and his life begins again. Each time he wakes up it is a different time in his life and the time between the time travel backwards to his death gets shorter.

While I enjoyed most of this book I did find it was a book of it’s time as it was published in 1986. The main focus was on the relationship between Jeff and Pamela, another time traveller.

I found that a lot of storylines was around Jeff’s sexual exploits with other women in other timelines. Why I said it is a book of it’s time because most of the female characters were described in a sexual manner which didn’t add much to the story itself.

I enjoyed the concepts if dying and coming back to an earlier time and when you read the book the idea of the “skew” for each time travel. In all I enjoyed the book very much but could have been much better if the female characters were treated with respect and not as a species of people to be used.

The Time Store (Book 1 of the Time Store)

By Andrew Clark &  Dee Matthews

I thoroughly enjoyed this book about a time travelling family called the Bradbeers. The Bradbeer family had been a time travelling family for many generations and the current Bradbeers were the guardians of time travel at Greenwich.

The main purpose of the time travelling with the Bradbeers was to help people experience something that they have missed out on in their lives.

One of the journey involved taking someone back to the 60’s to an Elvis Presley Concert that they couldn’t attend when they were younger due to their circumstances.

The Bradbeers took people to events that may have been in their lifetime, or before their life time and in some cases after their lifetime.

I found this book to very entertaining and the story drew me into the lives of the characters, so much.

The book does have it dark moments as well has it lighter moments. We are introduced to a character who will appear in the sequel Phelix in the second book. I do recommend this book to anyone who loves time travel.

Phelix (Book 2 of The Time Store)

By Andrew Clark &  Dee Matthews

When i read Phelix, the second book in the Time Store series and I really enjoyed reading about the 3 main protagonist in this series, David, Sarah, Jason and Dan and watching their characters develop.

The main reason I wasn’t so sure about this book is because in parts it really did feel like it was written by two different people, each writting a chapter and emailing it to the other author and then they add their bit.

I am sure this never happened but it felt like that.

The main antagonist in this story is Oliver Bradbeer a man who had been emotionally damaged when his father took him to a place during the second world war in which he became separated from his thare during a bombing raid.

This event scarred him so badly that he spent much of his life in the past where he becomes more mentally and emotionally distressed and his life descends into murder, theft and general anarchy.

I was at a loss about a character called Gary who definitely came across in the narrative as someone with a very dark secret and motivation.

The way Gary’s story turned out to be something something completely different and to be honest this story line did nothing to enhance the book and it made me feel very uncomfortable about where I thought this book was going. It was a very dark part of the book.

I would probably read another book if there was one in this series just to see what happens with the Bradbeer family. Bradbeer is an appropriate name considering how much time they spend in the Plume of Feathers their local pub.

The Unexpected Gift of Joseph Bridgeman (Book one of The Downstream Diaries)

By Nick Jones

I found this to be an absolutely brilliant book. The kind of book you want to get to end but never want to end.

The main character in this book is Joseph Bridgeman, who had a love of the Beatles and found he had the ability to time travel while listening to their album with the help of his of his friend Alexia who enabled him through hypnosis to time travel.

Joseph’s life fell apart when his sister, Amy, went missing in 1992. On discovering that he could time travel he travelled back to stop his sister from disapperaing.

The only problem Joseph had when he times travelled he had the same problem as the Terminator. He arrived naked and the further he went back he could only stay a short time there.

Did Joseph managed to save his sister? you will have to read it for yourselves.

I could really empathise with. I am going to read book two to see how Joseph rekindles his relationship with Alexia?

So that is the 5 books I read in 2020, have Have you read any good books lately?

Any books you want to tell me about and suggest I read in 2021? feel free to comment and also consider signing up for email updates on new blogs that I write. All the books I have mentioned are available in paperback or you can buy the kindle additions on Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.com

Finally if you enjoyed this blog then look at my other blogs an the review of the book by Stephen King 22.11.63. the time travelling book to the time JFK was assassinated.