Wyrmhole [Paperback]

Jay Caselberg (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 7, 2003

Jack Stein lives and works in the crowded, semi-organic city known as the Locality. He's hired by the Outreach Mining Company to investigate the mysterious disappearance of one of its mining crews on an uncolonized planet. But his psychic dreams are full of strange mystical symbols and red herrings, making Jack wonder if Outreach truly wants the miners found. And the deeper he digs, the more people want to see him dead...

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

Psychic investigator Jack Stein makes a living off his dreams, for he receives information on his crime cases in them. If his isn't a respected profession, and he isn't really all that good at it, at least it pays the bills. Now Jack has been hired by resource-hungry, interplanetary conglomerate Outreach Industries to look into the disappearance of a team of miners on Dairil III, and things aren't going so well. His dreams are strangely littered with arcane symbols and undecipherable clues, and in no time at all, a pack of characters who are connected in interesting ways very much wants him out of the way, leading Jack to wonder whether Outreach really wants this case solved. Furthermore, a 12-year-old computer prodigy from the streets, who has adopted Jack as her caretaker, knows a whole lot more about the case than he does. A fun, fast-paced sf mystery. Paula Luedtke
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Product Details

• Paperback: 320 pages
• Publisher: Roc (October 7, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0451459490
• ISBN-13: 978-0451459497
• Product Dimensions: 6.8 x 4.2 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,349,284 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Jay Caselberg was born in a country town in Australia and then traveled extensively while growing up. In 1996, he started writing with a passion. For nearly the next two years, he wrote full time and garnered his first few publications writing as James A. Hartley. In 1998, he rejoined the workforce. Since then, he has continued to write and publish, both as Jay Caselberg and James A. Hartley. He currently still works in the IT consulting industry on international projects. He writes across many genres, both at short story and novel length, crossing the boundaries of Science Fiction, Fantasy, Mystery, and the Literary, generally with a dark edge. He is currently based in Germany. You can find him at http://www.jaycaselberg.com

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Way more mystery than science fiction, July 24, 2006

By 

Christopher Hivner (Dallastown, PA USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Wyrmhole (Paperback)

Jack Stein is a psychic investigator. He receives clues in dreams and visions, then puts them together to solve cases. He has been hired by Outreach Industries to investigate the disappearance of one of their mining crews. Jack lives in an enclosed city called the Locality which has three sections Old, Mid and New. Jack's circumstances have him living in Old, not somewhere you necessarily want to be. Being a psychic investigator doesn't pay well and doesn't garner much respect. Add to that the fact that Jack isn't very good at it.

The deeper Jack gets into his investigation of the missing miners, the more people lie to him and want to hurt him, until he's not sure what the truth is. An old "friend" who he had enlisted to help him gets killed and Jack finds himself taking care of Billie, a clever, smart, but old-before-her-years 12 year old girl who was living with the friend under unsavory circumstances.

Wyrmhole is pretty well written and moves along at a decent pace but ultimately has problems. Jack is not good as an investigator. In fact, I'm not sure he figured any part of it out himself. Someone else was always helping him and pushing him in the right direction. There is also little reason given for you to care about Jack; he's a loser of his own making. When the whole mystery is finally revealed in the end, I was left feeling, 'That was it? That's what took 300 pages to get to?'

This isn't a bad novel and it did keep my interest, but it needed work.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars at least its different, January 5, 2005

By 

vegimatic "veg" (Pasadena, CA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Wyrmhole (Paperback)

I really like this book, plot was a bit lazy, but the writing style was good. Good character interaction, very good emoting of the central characters. The only thing was that even though he's suppose to be solving things on an unconscious, intuitive level, it does make it seem as if this PI doesn't really solve things so much as been given strategically placed plot movers to make the story progress. Still, this book is more about the journey rather than the end trip. Entertaining just to read and go with it. Like it much better than his 2nd novel in this series.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Starts Well, But Deteriorates Quickly, August 1, 2009

By 

David A. Lessnau (USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Wyrmhole (Paperback)

Jay Caselberg's "Wyrmhole" starts out with a lot of promise: an interesting concept and setting coupled with good, clear writing. But, that promise quickly deteriorates. The further you get into the book, the more you're aware that the main character, a variant of an investigator, has no people skills, no organizational skills, no technical skills, and no INVESTIGATIVE skills. He basically moves through the book by thrashing around and luckily finding others to follow up on the hints he gets from his psychic skills. How we're supposed to believe that he could ever put food on the table as an investigator I don't know. Couple this with a lack of a logical progression through the plot and I can only charitably give it a Pretty Bad 2 stars out of 5.