Review by Hatethouself -- Worldlines by Adam Guest

[Hatethouself]

[Following is a volunteer review of "Worldlines" by Adam Guest.]

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3 out of 4 stars

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“Worldlines: A “Many Worlds” Novel” by Adam Guest starts off with our protagonist Garry in the middle of telling his near-death experience in their physics university lecture, he told the story when he narrowly escaped a lorry that would’ve probably killed him. Later on, they find out that this is just an introduction of the sort to their lesson of parallel universes. The book starts off calmly and our protagonist and his girlfriend go on a trip to the alps the book then introduces us to a version of Garry from another world, in this world Garry did get hit by the lorry and is cursed with a limp and loss of motor skills in his right arm, the book kicks off when this Garry lucid dreams and unknowingly enter the worldline of another Gary in which he commits a crime, the rest of the book is dedicated to somehow contacting the other worldlines as a way to get an innocent man off prison.

Concept wise; it is fascinating but I’m pretty sure it is by no means original and I want to start off by stating that this will be the first book that I’ve read that involves parallel universes so I will not be nor am able to compare it to books with similar themes. I think the author did a good job of incorporating parallel universes to his story and all the intricacies that come with it. I feel that while the characters can only communicate with other worlds through very little means and with very little time the whole concept of the parallel universe still rings and reverberate and can be felt throughout the whole book.

What I most like about this book is obviously the plot, the characters are okay, they fill their role but the plot is obviously where it’s at, I think the different worlds and their interactions are masterfully woven into a good story. The writing and editing are passable, I don’t know if it’s just how British writers write but I do feel sometimes that the sentences drag on and could’ve been more concise and less confusing but atleast I didn’t catch anything that was grammatically wrong.

Now to the negatives. While I say that the plot is my favorite part of the book, that doesn’t mean it is by any means perfect, I think the pacing is a bit rough around the edges which is why I have a bit of love and hate relationship with this book, one scene it propels you up with great excitement and tension then it kind of just dips quickly and won’t go back up till the next exciting scene. This is also a bit of a slow starter the first 30 or something pages or so are filled with info dumps and it might not have helped that the book is written in the first-person, it’s a cycle of you meet a character then the protagonist gives a good lengthy description of their relationship with the character and then you meet the next one and the character then proceeds to tell you his history with that character and to make it worse this directly contributes to my next point. My most disliked part about this book is how it repeats itself. “What do you mean?” I might hear you ask, So when we jump from one world to another the character sorts of repeat themselves and believe me I get it, I get what the author is trying to do but at the same time, I didn’t need Multiple Garys to repeat the conversations they had because I literally just read the exact same conversation 5 pages ago! And again I totally get what he was doing but you didn’t need to copy and paste entire convos and explanations, you could’ve literally just said: “And they explained it to us” or something like that, and if you wanted to stick with this whole repetition thing then please atleast make it a bit shorter, that way you can keep the whole feeling that you were aiming for but not make the reader re-read what they just read. Finally, I think that the ending/endings were a bit dragged on and could’ve ended 10 pages earlier and would’ve had been more impactful.

There’s not much in this book that would isolate a specific audience, very little gore, and very little erotic content.

Overall I give this book a 3 out of 4 stars. I know that sounds a bit surprising considering that the negatives section of the review is 5 times longer than my positives but that’s just because the rest “positives” were mediocre to good and I really couldn’t speak about them as much. All in all, I think think this is a really good book with an underwhelming ending. It’s not a two because it is still not mediocre and not a 4 because it is not groundbreaking.

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Worldlines
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[Bigwig1973]

I have read Worldlines but not many other books with parallel universes and I think you're right in saying that he did a nice job transitioning from one "worldline" to the other. Also, your review seems so straightforward, honest, and uncontrived. It is kind of refreshing to read, for me anyways!

[Hatethouself]

I appreciate the kind words. Especially about me being straightforward and all that, I'm glad it came across the way I wanted it to.