4 out of 4 stars
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Science Fiction is one of my favourite genres. So, there was no hesitation, when choosing Superhighway by Alex Fayman, for review. And I must say that, Fayman did not let me regret about my decision, even for a second, while reading this fiction.
This is quite a small book. The copy which I got contained only 248 pages. However, it was divided into 46 chapters, which were short and favourable for a quick read, without getting tired. The straight-forward use of language, with fewer background descriptions was an extra support for that.
It is the first book of Superhighway trilogy. So, this book can be considered as the introduction and the entrance for the full story.
The story is woven around an orphan, named Alexander Fine, who accidentally finds his ability to travel via computer networks. He uses that ability to rob money from the bad guys and give it to the innocent, who are in need of money, playing a ‘Robin Hood’ role. The whole story contains how he comforts himself and others, the trouble he meets up with in the process and how he gets around them. It is written in the first-person view.
Traveling to whatever place you want in an instance, earning a large sum of money by just doing nothing, having a luxury life, are some fantasies that most of us get busy with, when we are day dreaming. In this story, those fantasies are made real and has let the reader feel, how such a life will be. Though the concepts of genetic mutation (seen in ‘X-Men’ movie) and ability of instant traveling (seen in ‘Jumper’ movie) are not new to science fiction readers, Fayman has mingled those concepts beautifully into his fiction in such a way that, reader might see them in a totally new perspective.
It will not be fair, if I do not talk about the way that the author has set the flow of the story. Initially, it starts in a way, which keeps the reader in complete darkness, but extremely curious. Then little by little the revelations come, and reader gets familiar with the story. Fayman lets the story to run in a smooth, monotonous manner for a while (which is still not boring) and makes sudden dramatic changes, at unexpected points. So, this fiction has several climaxes, and it even ends with a climax, which connects this book with the second book of the trilogy.
There was creative and interesting use of language in several occasions, which I would like to highlight. “Dempsters got pregnant and aborted me” , “My pockets were empty and in reality, they were not even my pockets”, “presence of Eva in my life helped me stop looking into the rear-view mirror” are some examples.
Though it had so many good features, there were a number of mistakes, including grammar errors, printing mistakes, missing of punctuations and typos. However, they did not exert a big influence on the flow of the story, and I am reluctant to reduce the rating, just because of them. So, I heartily give a rating of 4 out of 4 for this marvelous piece of work.
I would like to recommend this book for any science fiction lover, who wants to deviate from the usual alien stuff, which is the base in most of the science fictions. Yet, I would not recommend this for much younger readers since, this contains some sexual content.
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Superhighway
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