Take a photo of a barcode or cover
austinstorm 's review for:
Jumper
by Steven Gould
Youtube review: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E3d6a4pj8Oc
Notable for being on the ALA's 'Top 10 Most-Banned Books' for nearly a decade in the 90s, and also for being turned into a truly mediocre movie, Jumper still holds up as a pretty compelling YA genre book.
In genre you want a few things:
A high-concept premise that allows discussion of big real-world ideas.
Solid world-building, asking "if this is true, what else would be true?"
Good incident - a plot that moves along well
And good character development / psychology.
Jumper has most of these things, sometimes in uneven amounts.
The premise is great, and Gould gets a lot of mileage out of figuring out the nuts and bolts. Sometimes this is for its own sake - Davy, the teleporting protagonist, determines by experimentation that he can't 'jump' while in handcuffs, but then he's never put in handcuffs or otherwise restrained, so it's a moot point. This and other violations of Chekhov's Gun abound, but somehow the details are enjoyable enough. Gould even talks about quantum physics, which is pure hand-waving, but in the context of YA it reads like this is a 'hard sci-fi' book.
The incident is the weak point - all the major plot points are extremely ham-handed. In the first chapter Davy gets beat to within an inch of his life by his abusive father, and then runs away to promptly get nearly raped by a trucker he's hitchhiking a ride from. These are the incidents that got the book banned in so many school libraries. Later in the book terrorists strap bombs on a character and blow them up. It's that level - everything to the nth degree.
All of this plot insanity does give credence to the book's strongest point, which is its depiction of Davy's struggles with anger and the desire for revenge. This is contrasted with his high emotional intelligence and awareness, born of a lifetime of reading.
A lot of these elements are borrowed from AA and Al-anon, and step 9 - making amends - gets a lot of time.
The book moves really well, is ultimately uplifting despite the hackneyed plot elements. Davy is a great protagonist, and ultimately you want to spend more time in this world. It's a pity the movie didn't do a better job of capturing the elements that made the book so popular.
Notable for being on the ALA's 'Top 10 Most-Banned Books' for nearly a decade in the 90s, and also for being turned into a truly mediocre movie, Jumper still holds up as a pretty compelling YA genre book.
In genre you want a few things:
A high-concept premise that allows discussion of big real-world ideas.
Solid world-building, asking "if this is true, what else would be true?"
Good incident - a plot that moves along well
And good character development / psychology.
Jumper has most of these things, sometimes in uneven amounts.
The premise is great, and Gould gets a lot of mileage out of figuring out the nuts and bolts. Sometimes this is for its own sake - Davy, the teleporting protagonist, determines by experimentation that he can't 'jump' while in handcuffs, but then he's never put in handcuffs or otherwise restrained, so it's a moot point. This and other violations of Chekhov's Gun abound, but somehow the details are enjoyable enough. Gould even talks about quantum physics, which is pure hand-waving, but in the context of YA it reads like this is a 'hard sci-fi' book.
The incident is the weak point - all the major plot points are extremely ham-handed. In the first chapter Davy gets beat to within an inch of his life by his abusive father, and then runs away to promptly get nearly raped by a trucker he's hitchhiking a ride from. These are the incidents that got the book banned in so many school libraries. Later in the book terrorists strap bombs on a character and blow them up. It's that level - everything to the nth degree.
All of this plot insanity does give credence to the book's strongest point, which is its depiction of Davy's struggles with anger and the desire for revenge. This is contrasted with his high emotional intelligence and awareness, born of a lifetime of reading.
A lot of these elements are borrowed from AA and Al-anon, and step 9 - making amends - gets a lot of time.
The book moves really well, is ultimately uplifting despite the hackneyed plot elements. Davy is a great protagonist, and ultimately you want to spend more time in this world. It's a pity the movie didn't do a better job of capturing the elements that made the book so popular.