4 out of 4 stars
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Alex Fine, our protagonist (and narrator), was attracted by the internet from a very young age. Since he lived in a poor Los Angeles orphanage most of his life, he didn’t have many chances to access the internet until the orphanage got a computer lab when he was 18 years old. The very same night of the computer lab’s debut, Alex was able to access the internet in a completely surreal way – ‘electroportation’. Alex discovers that he is able to travel through the internet to anywhere in the world. Moreover, while in the digital web, Alex is also capable of downloading databases and manipulating archived data.
How does our protagonist decide to use his newfound superpowers? He determines to use these abilities for good. However, like so many well-intentioned young people, Alex must also wrestle with his natural impulsiveness, naivety, and inability to reel in his raging hormones. These character flaws shipwreck his noble schemes and lead to unexpected tragedies.
Superhighway by Alex Fayman is an intriguing fictional novel that cannot be boxed into one genre. The author masterfully blends sci-fi, romance, and crime in this thrilling book. Although the thought of traveling through the internet sounds implausible, Fayman provides a very convincing background story to explain why and how this mode of transportation was developed. The romance aspect of this book was not forced, nor was it an afterthought; rather, it complimented both the sci-fi and crime themes. Moreover, there was a portion of this book that had me in real suspense. I don’t usually experience suspense while reading, not even mystery books, so this was a great experience for me.
There were a couple of grammatical errors, but they were too insignificant to subtract from the enjoyment of Fayman’s masterpiece. I especially liked that the author opted to have many short chapters instead of a few long ones. However, the final chapter was a brief two paragraphs that left the story with a major cliffhanger and no signs of a second book on the way. Fortunately, after a quick Google search, I was happy to find out that Superhighway 2 was recently published (May 1, 2017). It also seems that the series is planned to be a trilogy. I hope to be able to read the entire series.
At first I was tempted to rate this novel 3 stars because of the inconclusive ending, however, after realizing that the second installment in the series is already available I decided to award Superhighway 4 out of 4 stars. I highly recommend this to everyone, especially sci-fi enthusiasts.
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Superhighway
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