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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
If you are going to go, go all out, March 16, 2010
This review is from: Geosynchron (Book Three of the Jump 225 Trilogy) (Paperback)
First let me say that I love the world and the idea behind the series. I had a great time reading the books and I would have given this a 5 for that. However I also want to give it a 3 for other reasons. So I settled on a 4. I am going to try to keep major spoilers out of this but there may be a few smaller ones.
My major issue with the series is for things that seemed like they should be linked, but never were. It is Natch's story but the Surina's influence the whole world. Everyone seems to play in the sandbox they made. There are two parallel stories about Surina technology, Teleportation and MultiReal. Both are similar in the way they could change society and how the government wants to stop them. The novels do a great job illustrating that. Teleportation was neutered before it could be perfected. It is implied that teleportation could be instant, but is now limited to a time intensive process (hours). MultiReal's fate I won't get into because of spoilers.
The code for both of these technologies came from the same place, the Surina's. It is mentioned that the code for Teleportation and MultiReal share/have similar structures. That they "fit" together. It seems obvious that with both technologies one could really move between realities. The human race could truly evolve into a go anywhere/do anything post human existence. The clues in the book make it seem like this was the Surina plan from the beginning.
My problem is that this never happens. None of the characters bring it up as a possibility or solution. They never even see the connection. To me it would have been a great place to take the story. An even more fascinating possibility on top of a the great world we were already given.
So I think it is a great series and a good read but I am disappointed in where we eventually ended up. Or at least in where we could have ended up but didn't. Hopefully a future series in this universe will explore that more.
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Seminal Work of Science Fiction, June 6, 2010
This review is from: Geosynchron (Book Three of the Jump 225 Trilogy) (Paperback)
Every once in a great while I run across an author who has imagined a world so vivid and complete that I feel as if it actually exists. When that world is set hundreds of years in the future, this feat of creation is even more astounding.
Geosynchron, the final piece of David Edelman's Jump 225 Trilogy, completes the story of entrepreneur Natch, convincingly portraying his evolution from self-centered businessman to socially-conscious guardian of MultiReal. Infected with life-threatening black code and on the run from his nemesis Brone as well two executives vying for control of the Government, Natch must choose between two paths, each with dire consequences for the welfare of the human race.
As with its predecessors, this novel features intense action sequences, mentally-stimulating political maneuvering, and interesting thematic material. Here, the possible unification of the connectibles (the majority of the population who fully embrace the fusion of their bodies with software that regulats their bodily functions and connects them to the Datasea) and the unconnectibles (a minority group who have chosen to remain in a more-or-less natural state), and the disparate viewpoints they embrace, form a central motif.
If humans are on an inevitable path towards perfection, is it truly possible to destroy a technology that has the possibility to improve the human condition (but with alarming collateral consequences) or can we only hope to come up with a way to restrict its proliferation until adequate controls are in place? This is not only Natch's dilemma, but the dilemma our society faces as we stand on the brink of technologies that could alter the course of human evolution.
The Jump 225 Trilogy, for me, deserves not only a wide readership but also recognition as one of the most important sci-fi works of our time.
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2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A clean break from Possibilities., February 19, 2010
This review is from: Geosynchron (Book Three of the Jump 225 Trilogy) (Paperback)
Like I said in my review of Infoquake, the first book in the trilogy, this series is what The Matrix series could have been if they had bothered to hire a writer.
When it comes to hard science fiction, you have to succeed on two fronts. The first front is the science. This trilogy passes that with flying colors. Every single technological development in the book makes perfect sense and is a logical extension of where human programming is at today. It isn't the kind of flashy, sloppy writing that a lot of sci-fi has. These are all things that we would develop and would want to develop, whether they end up benefiting us or not.
The second front is the fiction. There are definitely no problems there. We've got a great story that moves smoothly through all three books. We don't have any characters who fall into stereotypical black or white characterizations except maybe Len Borda, and what can you expect from someone living under this curse: "May you live long enough to see exactly what you've done to the world." The one character who doesn't seem to be consistent is Natch himself and that's only because he's so unpredictable it's impossible to predict what he will do next.
As to the ending of the novel mentioned in a previous review? I was a bit concerned as I got to the final pages and realized how little of the book there was left. But then when I read the last two pages and saw where Natch was going and read his final words, I had no problem with the ending. I don't need to see characters killed just for the sake of having them killed and I feel that Natch's choice fit into the person he had become over the course of the last book. And they're good solid last lines. And that's all we can hope for from any book.
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