2 out of 4 stars
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30th Century Escape by Mark Kingston Levin, PhD is the story of Captain Jennifer Hero. In the 30th century, she is the leader of a task force that will go to what is known as the Diversion Point. The goal is to keep the genetically altered humans, known as Syndos, from killing all of the unaltered humans which are known as Naturals. While the task force goes back in time 300 years via time travel, Jennifer doesn’t follow them.
Instead, Jennifer heads into the 21st century, the year 2015 to be precise. She goes there to grieve the man that she loved as he was the one to invent the time machine and she takes the opportunity to start a new life. After being found where she landed months before, she has to make personal adaptations and hide her superior intellect through amnesia due to head trauma. Another thing to note is that she has a more open outlook on sexual endeavors, which leads to some interesting scenarios later on.
I really thought that I would like this book, considering that the concept of time travel to any destination in time and space is a widely studied subject. Seeing Jennifer trying to blend in with regular humans was different, especially since she’s pretty much a superhuman. I also enjoyed how willing she was to jump in and find a purpose instead of moping in depression. However, I have more things about this that I disliked than liked.
For one, I didn’t really like how Jennifer is portrayed as being not flawed and pretty much perfect. That makes for an unrelatable character and tends to be a turn off for most readers, especially since that has no room for character development. These characters are known as "Mary Sues" or "Gary Stus."
Another thing that I didn’t care much for being the graphic nature of the sex scenes. It seemed like a lot of unnecessary emphasis on where people’s tongues were being placed. Some sex scenes wouldn’t have been too bad, but this book is supposed to be under the genre of Science Fiction/Fantasy, so more emphasis on other elements would be benefiting to the book. If you are going to include a lot of detailed sex scenes, then make sure that it is reflected in the book’s genre.
One last thing that I didn’t really care for was the focus on Jennifer’s studies in her first Ph.D. program. The author used a lot of scientific jargon that was far beyond the schema of a typical reader’s knowledge. While Mr. Levin did try to explain in layman terms in the chapter that the committee was questioning her about her theories, it was still a bit much for me to understand. It would be beneficial for me to do some more research on the formulation of the universe, considering that the subject of Dark Matter, Dark Energy, and String Theory are very fascinating to me.
It is important to note that this book should be for mature audiences only because it has very detailed descriptions of the characters having sex. It's not limited to just two people either, a lot of time there are threesomes and even a foursome happens as well. This might not appeal to most readers, especially those that would have read this for the scientific themes that are presented. However, if you are someone that can overlook the graphic nature of these scenes and have a desire to learn more about the universe, then give this a shot.
Unfortunately, this book still needs a lot of work as I found a multitude of errors. Perhaps having some more rounds of editing to check over the grammar and punctuation would be good. I also suggest reworking Jennifer into a more relatable main character. None of the other characters need to be redone, they had a lot more detail.
It is with these notes and suggestions that I give 30th Century Escape by Mark Kingston Levin 2 out of 4 stars. I took one off for the number of errors and one off for how convoluted the second half got. There seemed to be so much going on, with not enough explanation. With this being the author’s first book, I hope that he has improved upon his writing in the books that follow this one.
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30th Century: Escape (First Edition)
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