Graham Smith does not speak, does not have friends or family, and never, ever, wavers from his daily rituals. Any deviation from his routine makes reality shift and change around him. Coworkers disappear, his apartment changes, his parents are suddenly alive and just as suddenly vanish again...And so every day he walks in precisely the same way along the sidewalk, ties his shoelaces in exactly the same way, and sticks sticky notes to everything, to remind him of what he did and when.

It's a lonely, enclosed life--and it is abruptly burst open by a wild-eyed young woman who tells him his life is in danger. review tbc.

Available for free http://chris-dolley.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=26&amp.... ( )

Quite a different story. ( )

I could barely put this book down. I don’t want to give any details about the story beyond the synopsis already provided for the book. The less you know going into the story, the more fun you'll have reading it. I slowly pieced together what was going on along with the main characters. Even once you figure out what’s going on, there’s still a lot more to figure out. Why is it happening? What can be done about it? Who can be trusted?

If I’d had the time, I might have read this book in one sitting. Since I don’t have that sort of time, I read it over the course of a few days. As I went about my work day, I would occasionally find myself thinking about the book. I would speculate about what might happen next or reevaluate the meaning of earlier parts of the book based on the most recent revelations. It made me eager to get home so that I could read some more. It’s been a while since a book has captured my attention so well that I would think about it even when I wasn’t reading it.

There’s nothing that pulls me out of a book faster than characters who don’t ring true. The main characters in Resonance, however, were likeable and believable. Not to mention unique and quirky. This story could have been confusing, yet somehow the author managed to write it in a way that was very easy to follow. This was even true during the climax when things were especially chaotic. As others have mentioned, this isn’t really “hard science” but I found the story to be internally consistent which is what really matters to me. ( )

Book Info: Genre: Speculative Fiction
Reading Level: Adult
Recommended for: Fans of speculative fiction, those interested in quantum physics
Trigger Warnings: kidnapping, violence, attacks

My Thoughts: Since I was reading the books by Dolley I'd received in exchange for a review, I decided to go ahead and read this one, which I've had since well before those others.

This is a really good book with a really cool idea. The problem is I can't tell you much about it without ruining the surprise of discovery for yourself. It deals with some pretty intense quantum theories, but in such a way as to be highly readable. This quote will give you a bit of a hint: “Take away the observer and the world unravels. Without observation there can be no substance and without ritual there can be no cement.”

Graham is a really interesting and well-done character, as is Annalise in all her incarnations. Ray makes a good minor foil, and Adam Sylvestrus is chilling as the main Big Bad. This book will not be for everyone, but if what I've revealed intrigues you, I can only recommend you check out this book for yourself. I haven't checked recently to see if it is still in the Baen Free Library, but that place is a treasure trove, so it's a great place to check out regardless. Highly recommended for fans of speculative fiction dealing with quantum theories.

Disclosure: I picked up a copy of this book a few years back from the Baen Free Library. All opinions are my own.

Synopsis: Graham Smith is a 33 year-old office messenger. To the outside world he's an obsessive-compulsive mute—weird but harmless. But to Graham Smith, it's the world that's weird. And far from harmless. He sees things others can't . . . or won't. He knows that roads can change course, people disappear, office blocks migrate across town. All at night when no one's looking. The world's an unstable place, still growing, sloughing off layers of reality like dead skin. One day you drive by, and it's changed. Annalise Mercado hears voices, all from girls calling themselves Annalise. Sometimes she thinks they're spirit guides, sometimes she thinks she's crazy. But then they start telling her about Graham Smith and the men who want to kill him. That's when they meet. So begins the story of two people whose lives are fragmented across alternate realities. And how the hold the key to the future of a billion planets. . . . ( )

Weirdly fun. Complex and you have to pay attention, but it does all hang together in the end. The science is all a bit confused and made up, but it features sufficiently rarely that you don't really notice.

Graham Smith is the hero of our tale, and although he doesn't come out and say so, he's clearly somewhere along the autistic OCD spectrum of disorders. But he has a reason to behave so, in a changing and unstable world, patterns and repetitive behaviours can help keep things constant. Even when no-one else realises the world changes, he knows its not normal for his dad to have died three times. And then he meets Annalise, but before he's really thought about what this means, the world has changed on him again. However he meets a slightly different Annalise here too, and discovers his life might be in danger from a mysterious corporation called Paradim. A stressful couple of days disturbs his routines, but again the world changes and he can revert to his preferred existence. Then an overheard chance conversation mentions Paradim again and sparks memories of the charismatic Annalise.

This isn't a book about a mentally challenged person finding a normal life though, it is definitely more of a soft sf, adventure story, where the central hero just happens to be slightly different. I'm not completely convinced by the handling of Graham. At times he seems to respond far too well to the challenges he is faced with. But he is an sympathetic character and the Annalises are good too.

The plot is suitably weird, and while I don't think the author really has a grasp on 200 billion or statistics in general, the coincidences can be overlooked. It's certainly an interesting idea, and as various options are explored for Graham's world changes we see a few potential futures.

The writing isn't scintillating, but the action keeps you going through and the mystery is kept going long enough for the final conclusion to be well worked, believable and entertaining. Worth reading.

There's only one Graham Smith! ( )