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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A refreshing glass of beer for the thirsty spec fic fan, April 24, 2005
Paul Witcover's reality bending tale is a period piece, the period being adolescence. The primary and secondary worlds are connected via Uncle Jimmy's role playing game, itself a fusion of reality, the online world, tech creep, Big Brother, global media, and conflict. This story of Jack and Jilly Doone could work for any generation, but is thankfully written for mine. Witcover blends themes of pre-adolescent and adolsecent coming of age, and of self discovery, in two separate (or are they?) realities. He artfully interlaces humor and detail in his unique, wryly twisted brand of narrative. Why is the book so refreshing? You can't predict what is beyond the borders of the next page, and the story is both surprising and fulfilling without succumbing to phone book dimensions. Thank you, Mr Witcover, for a well brewed story. You will hopefully have driven many down the road to read speculative fiction, and at least *someone* has written to thank you.
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Witcover does it again., April 22, 2005
Paul Witcover, author of the fantasy cult masterpiece Waking Beauty, is back and none too soon.
Literarily, his new novel, Tumbling After, plows new ground as well as some that has been left fallow for too many years. Creative use of tense to demonstrate the ambiance of moments as well as to frame the swirling temporal context, deep psychology of the characters, hot live action and interplay of plural realities are so deftly interwoven as to be seamless.
Absorbing, I read it straight through as I did not want to put it down. I have, however, revisited it more than once to study how he pulls some of this off. Science fiction and fantasy readers -- gamers in particular -- should be entertained and delighted, but the significance and appeal of this work is not limited by those parameters.
Kudos.
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5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Why We Have Speculative Fiction, March 3, 2005
Among the wonders of Tumbling After is the number of things this novel gets just right on its way to a shocking finish. The book opens on a near idyllic late summer on the Delaware shore almost thirty years ago. The tightly bound twelve-year-old twins, Jack and Jilly Doone, their game-designing uncle Jimmy, lofty teenage sister and overbearing father are all forced to seek refuge from a hurricane. The setting and Witcover's depiction of the twins' special connection, their awareness of the almost telepathic bond that unites them and sets them apart, could be the beginning of a well-done mainstream coming-of-age novel.
Mutes & Norms, which Uncle Jimmy designs and has the twins game test in the course of the novel, is just the kind of role-playing, dice-driven game that turned up everywhere in the wake of Dungeons And Dragons. When we find ourselves in a world seemingly derived from the game, where a human/falcon mutation, Kestral, and fellow mutes get assembled into a fighting team, we are on what appears to be familiar genre ground. With the opening chapters of The Three Musketeers as prototype, this is perfect YA adventure complete with the foreshadowing of dark trials to come.
The scenes of combat between Mutes and Norms are almost ritualistic, fought out on a devastated landscape and studded with references to probability and chance - God being in the dice. But the trials Kestral faces turn out to be very dark indeed. The plots and counter plots that surround him eventually yield a chilling vision of his world and its origins.
On the Delaware shore, as Jack begins to experience uncanny ability, the twins' world itself becomes increasingly unsettling. Sex when it manifests itself does so in ways that are forbidden, disturbing, which is not something easily achieved these days.
The ending when it comes is absolutely uncompromising. A novel like this one where alternate realities are connected by a mobius strip, one that makes us see human relationships in a new light, where the alien and the human merge, is a reminder of why Speculative Fiction exists.
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