Customer Reviews

MultiReal (Book Two of the Jump 225 Trilogy)

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

The second installment of David Edelman's Jump 225 Trilogy, picks up on renegade entrepreneur Natch's struggles to bring to market a software product so groundbreaking that it threatens the stability of this information-centric future civilization. The product of decades of development by the iconic Margaret Surina, MultiReal software allows a user instantaneously to run unlimited possible effects stemming from a particular cause, choosing the particular reality outcome from these choice cycles that best suits the user's needs. Obviously the power to select a desired outcome in virtually any cause-effect scenario gives each MultiReal user tremendous power over others, a realization that triggers a mad scramble by the Defense and Wellness Council for control of this critical technology. On the run after a disastrous MultiReal demonstration, infected with an insidious and debilitating form of black code, and the target of an aggressive scheme by the Defense and Wellness Council to strip him and his fiefcorp employees of their business licenses, Natch struggles not only to survive but also to ensure that he honors his weighty responsibility as MultiReal's guardian.

MultiReal succeeds in most respects, setting up what promises to be an exciting conclusion to the trilogy. It fleshes out the futuristic world that Edelman introduced us to in Infoquake, providing relevant pieces of back story to explain the various agendas of those maneuvering for control of MultiReal. And fascinating new aspects of this future culture, like "the Sigh" where multi connections can meet to experience an infinite variety of sensual pleasures, add tantalizing detail to this vision of the future. There are also some memorable set pieces, such as the action sequence where Natch uses MultiReal to dodge black code fire as well as the confrontations between Magan Kai Lee and High Executive Len Borda amidst the ancient sailing ship SeeNaRee used to decorate Borda's private chambers.

I would, however, like to see Edelman make a few adjustments in his approach to the critical third installment of the trilogy. The addition of more action sequences would be welcome, as the pacing of MultiReal slowed in some of the scenes involving prolonged political maneuvering and verbal sparring. I would also like to see Edelman delve more deeply into the philosophical confrontation between the individualistic bent of the libertarians and the collective mentality of the Defense and Wellness Council; the story really seemed to gain momentum and focus when that debate crystallized during the Prime Committee's hearing and during Natch's exchange with Brone concerning MultiReal 2.0. Finally, in his emphasis on technology descriptions, recounting of historical events, and descriptions of political maneuvering, Edelman tends at times to neglect the development of his characters and rely too much on dialogue tags that tell (rather than show) us how they are feeling. Natch, Jara and Horvil make an engaging trio of protagonists, and I'm interested in understanding better what motivates each of them.

Don't get me wrong. I'm a huge fan of this trilogy and find Edelman's vision of the future as original, thorough and convincing as any I've seen. If I had to guess what our future society will look like, I'd lay money on it taking a form resembling the setting of the Jump 225 Trilogy. And my constructive criticism represents nothing more than one selfish and picky fan's wish list of items I would like to see this talented author focus on in his next work.

This exciting novel is much better than Infoquake (which I really liked but wasn't overly moved by). Now I'm hooked on Edelman and I can't wait for his 3rd book. This is sci-fi at its best.

The book is fine. I have no complaints with that.

For the Kindle edition, though, Amazon delivers it as a Topaz file. This means that the publisher has embedded their own font for the book which you are not allowed to change. You are also unable to change the line-spacing. Fortunately, you are still allowed to change the font size.

In my opinion, the font included with this book is MUCH worse than the default ones that the Kindle usually uses.

Buying this Kindle book will just encourage the publisher to do this kind of thing to other eBooks. Which would NOT be good.

In Infoquake, Edelman created a futuristic world so thoroughly conceived and rooted in logic that it just makes sense.

In Multireal, he expands upon that foundation, providing us with even more details on how the pieces of this society fit together to give us a more refined picture of this already quite cohesive universe. As much as I love William Gibson, and Neal Stevenson, Edelman's dystopian view of the future just might take the cake. It's so imaginative and yet so well fleshed out that you feel like you could actually exist in this world.

The characters are compelling as is the story line. It's like Wall Street meets Neuromancer. I found all the political and financial machinations and maneuvering refreshing and exciting.

This trilogy is a very impressive debut for Edelman and I can't wait to see what he comes up with next.

Infoquake was such a great read that I feared the sequel wouldn't/couldn't be as great. I've rarely been so pleased with a sequel. The series reminds me of Azimov's Foundation series - only with a slick modern twist. I'm alternatively envious and terrified of the world Edelman's created. I do know that I can't wait to see what happens to Natch and his colleagues next.

David Lewis Edelman's corporate high tech future as envisioned in the "Jump 225" trilogy is one of the more interesting ones I have encountered. However, I found the pacing of "Multireal" not nearly as relentless as any I have encountered in Richard K. Morgan's novels, most notably, "Market Forces". This may turn away some potential readers who may think of Edelman as an American version of Morgan (I might add too, that he's almost as capable a prose stylist as Morgan is, especially in describing urban detail.). However, there is still much to recommend in "Multireal", simply for its exciting cast of Byzantine-like characters, in a futuristic corporate setting that definitely seems all too credible. I look forward to reading "Infoquake" and the concluding volumne in this trilogy.

As a writer of some web sci-fi too (Neuroceans), I am impressed by another writer here managing to blend both intrigue and the implications of many tricky new technologies we can imagine today. Nanotechnology, Biological/emotional enhancement, Virtual Reality, quantum uncertainty etc.....

The possibilities(!) are huge for a technological humanity and this book is riddled with them, yet it binds them with high readability through the arena of a Business. We confront the problems involved in bringing drastically powerful technology to the people. (This is fairly unlikely in itself, considering it normally evolves, rather slowly).


The first book is important to read first. This one continues the fragile position of a powerful, reality-enhancing new technology, that becomes bound to the actions of one man. It is interesting and it holds the mind, despite some difficulties. It is not as cultish as say, Dune, in terms of handling tension. The business dialogue is ok, but gets a bit Star Treky and protacted as the driving force. So the personal level is perhaps a bit lacking.

But, 'freedom of the individual versus the Group', is a major, worthy theme, and also the Group exploitation of power over ordinary lives. There are some shades of grey, certainly worthy of Dune etc.



Where will it all go? I'm not sure about the 2 volumes so far. It is certainly an absorbing, intelligent saga (at last) exploiting technological developments of today and their possibilities, and that films like the Matrix only scratch the surface of.

I find the placement of many of the technologies interesting and plausable, and worthy of stories themselves , but for the main technology that drives the book, it's very powerful and quite far-fetched. Would anyone want that much power, I wonder? What really would happen?...

Well, ideally, intelligent companies or people would get together and test the thing properly with extensive Development. It is sad that this cannot happen in this competition-dominated future!


However, the conclusion of the saga may decide its fate in more than just story, but whatever happens, these novels remain vivid, intriguing, post-cyberpunk interpretations of a future.

But will this considered saga conclude with enough decent power and panache, and contain a strong message to resonate?



The next volume is called Geosynchron and is out in 2010.
(My web sci-fi is published online: search for 'Neuroceans')

A great read. Unbelievably even more engaging than Infoquake. Edelman creates a symphony of characters, locations and politics, and then conducts the orchestra until their fingers bleed. Every time I thought I had the whole thing figured out, I was ecstatic to be wrong. Multireal is refreshingly original and thoroughly engrossing.

This review discusses all three books in general. Having read all three books in back-to-back succession it strikes me that the author, while starting with an interesting concept that was certainly engaging and enthralling during the first fifty pages of book 1- Infoquake (mediocre writing style and one-dimensional characters notwithstanding) had really not given enough thought for the entire trilogy and its ultimate conclusion. The sequel gives off many warning signs that the story is on the verge of derailment into pointless rhetoric about nothing and rehashing of rather familiar ideas and concepts. Seminal work of the 21st century it is not.

1) All the books read like they were either padded with unnecessary and rather poorly stylized exposition in an effort to make three books where one would have been enough. (God bless the nature of the literary business where quantity pays better than quality.) In essence, all three books could have been one book, with about 250-300 pages (at the very least) pruned for the sake of consistent flow, greater emphasis on relevant aspects of the story and the philosophy, all the while including less clutter and poor writing. The third book is the most poorly written in my opinion (with the second close behind), where internal monologue, narrative plot advancement, dialogue and general pontifications by the author fit together in a contrived and rather awkward jumble. There are literally entire paragraphs consisting of sentences ending with question marks as a means of showing the inner thoughts of the main female protagonist. It's rather formulaic (as it is repeated often as way of showing the reader that this is Jara's inner voice), sexist as the author only portrays the women as weak while all men as strong, conniving, stoic, or brazen, and grates on the eyes and ears by simply being written in bad style. Simply put, either the author felt like he was above having to do basic editing to perfect his craft, or his editors simply slept at the wheel. What this resulted in was 20% interesting story, 80% cyberpunk space opera (in the derogatory sense), with all the cheese and utterly misplaced profanities to boot. Oh, and I forgot to mention that 90% of the book takes place in meetings, board meetings, and more conversations in meetings. Again, if these 3 books were written as one, and better edited, the story would have been more compelling and less annoying to wade through.

2) The characters are completely inconsistent from chapter to chapter, and especially from book to book. In effect this does nothing other than further highlight the one-dimensionality of all characters in the books, as well as giving a close reader an unnecessarily intimate look into the author's own personal psychological issues. This becomes apparent due to the flat narrative of each character, the lack of credible motivations or believable inner lives, the shifting beliefs and allegiances of friends and enemies that no normal human psyche would adhere to considering their circumstances and the short time span of all three books. At best all the characters come off as are mere facets of the various views the author has of himself - author as stoic, author as self-deprecating fat guy, author as ideal Ayn Randian ubermench, author as guy who has issues with women, author as arm chair general that any person with military training would laugh at, etc. The tragic result of all this is that at the end I didn't have a scintilla of care about any of the characters or their ultimate fates because none of them were in any way 'real'. Basically this was a pastiche.

In sum: the concept of multiple realities is a difficult one to use as a premise. Therefore, it requires care and aforethought to flesh the entire story out before starting the written project. This is because there is absolutely nothing more frustrating than an author teasing the reader for three books that perhaps there will be a clever, if not profound, resolution and realization of the significance of the proposed concept, only to be left with a "I didn't know where to go or how to wrap things up so I coped-out as best as I could by falling back on the most "meh" ("uninspired" for the cultured among you) martyr-esque ending to avoid all the difficulties of a tangled and pointless web... of basically people talking in circles about nothing.

But wait, there's more! If you haven't had enough of pseudo-martyrdom, flat characters, poorly conceived technology and lot's of pseudo-science (fantasy set in the future) endless dialogues in meetings, more meetings, and yet even more supposedly high minded dialogue in more meetings, then brave on to book three- Geosynchron.

Better books on the same themes: Accelerando by Charles Stross. The Quantum Thief by Hannu Rajaniemi. The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigulapi. River of Gods by Ian McDonald. Light by M. John Harrison. Anything by Philip K. Dick or Jorge Luis Borges. And of course the classics: Neuromancer by William Gibson and the Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson.

An improvement on the first, which I gave 3 and 1/2 stars to, but I can't bring myself to give it a full four stars. The characters were great, and, as with the first book, the future world Edelman has constructed is stunningly complex and chock-full of cool ideas. The author's writing skills were also much improved from the first book. The story, however, was not that compelling. A ton happens in the novel, but very little of the action is the result of the characters' own efforts. Most everything is happening to them, not because of them. I guess that should be expected in the middle volume of a three-book series, as it sets things up for the characters to kick some serious butt in the final book, which I will definitely read. At least, I better, since I purchased it almost a year ago -- my "to read" stack (or should I say "stacks") of books on my nightstand is getting high.