4 out of 4 stars
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Superhighway is 248 pages of action, adventure, romance, and science fiction. This is the story of the life of Alexander Fine. The author lets us know that this is book one of a trilogy. This book gives a lot of history that is needed in future volumes. Alex goes through a lot of growth and development as a person within this book. Along with laying this groundwork, the author does a good job of writing a book that can stand by itself.
Alex is a boy who grows up in an orphanage. He sees life as tough for most people. He was rejected for adoption twice and becomes very solitary. He realizes that his ticket to a good future is probably through education. Therefore, he works hard to do well in school. As a teenager, Alex becomes fascinated with computers. He doesn’t have a lot of access to them at first. Then the orphanage gets some computers of their own and his world changes forever.
Shortly after setting up the new computers, Alex is sitting alone, looking at pictures of sports cars, when the computer screen goes blank. He tries to get the computer started several ways, finally trying to unplug and reconnect the network cable. Suddenly, he is sucked into the cable and transported through the Internet to a beach resort. It is the resort where the picture of the car was taken. Alex soon learns that he can travel the world through the Internet. He can also download data stored on computers connected to the Internet and even change the information stored in those files. Alex does some good deeds and gets into some big trouble as a result of his travels and interactions.
This story is really all about Alex. Other people come into his life for a while and then the story passes beyond them. Most of the other people in the book help Alex learn more about himself and the world around him. The other characters are decently developed for the time they are in the story. The short-term nature of many of these contacts may be related to the fact that Alex has been a loner most of his life. During this first book of the trilogy, Alex is doing a lot of learning and growing.
I really liked the basic premise that Alex can physically travel and interact inside the Internet. I feel that taking one or two basic changes and looking at how they would affect the world is a classic way of creating science fiction. Taking these changes and building a world and a story based on them is, to me, a beautiful thing. It also leaves room for traditional action, adventure, and romance. There are a few sex scenes but they are relatively tame and are typical of coming of age situations. There are one or two violent parts but they pass quickly and are important to the storyline. These did not detract from my enjoyment of this book.
Overall I found the book thoroughly enjoyable and rate it 4 out of 4. I found no editorial errors. I would believe that it was professionally edited. I gave this book a 4 because it is interesting, well written, and made me want to read the next book. I would recommend this book to people who enjoy science fiction. I would also recommend it to those who enjoy action, adventure, and romance in their reading.
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Superhighway
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