SPSFC3 First Phase Mini Reviews
Quantum Reaction
by Marc Wayne
My Vote:
No.
Note on Votes: A Yes/No vote is just my own. The other judges in the team might vote differently. Undecided usually means I think it has potential but I still have others to read before ranking them by personal preference.
Overall impression & Criticisms:
At ~18% read. Angela works remotely for a company called C4U – which helps blind people navigate through the world around them. Using a pair of two-way glasses, Angela sees through the “eyes” of her clients. She is completely helpless one day when a man barges into the home of one of her clients and she’s forced to witness a horrific murder take place. Shaken Angela decides the best way for her to move on is to keep working, to help keep her mind off the terrible event. But to her horror she spots the murderer again in public, seemingly heading straight for her current client, JT. In a panic she guides JT to safety and there they decide to actually meet up in real life (taboo in C4U employee/client confidentiality) to try and survive and work out what is going on.
Overall impression & Critisms:
First impression is that it is structurally well written but the story itself isn’t gripping me. In the beginning we are treated to exposition via two characters interacting. I’ve always found this a tricky thing to get right, and well, many writers fall short. I feel this unfortunately hits that “doesn’t get it right” category. The thing about having two characters talking about something the reader doesn’t know about is that you need to have the conversation come about naturally, otherwise it feels off. I can’t help but cringe a little when there are characters explaining to each other things they should already know. As a writer one has to tread very carefully here. And as such I tend to prefer exposition conveyed by other means. It’s an easy trap to fall into, and it seems (at this point in reading) that it is just a temporary hiccup, as several conversations afterwards flow quite nicely.
The world does feel a bit … blind. And I’m not sure if this is deliberate. A significant chunk of the story seems to be told and described through dialogue. Physical descriptions and third-person awareness does occur, but it seems second place to characters actually physically talking as scenes play out. I find it vaguely interesting, but I’m also left here wondering if this is a deliberate choice for the author (if so a brave and interesting idea though I’m not convinced it is executed particularly well … and if not, then I would like to see the writer develop more of an eye for the world they inhabit and the things that occur in general narrative.)
Complaints: I feel the whole “religious protests” is a little 1D and perhaps it’s because I’m not American and religion doesn’t play such a dominant role in our society (certainly is impactful in its own “smaller” way though). The whole thing feels off and forced to me. I just don’t see it being such a big deal at this point in the development.
I actually found the whole company strange. Here we have this new and up-and-coming technology, but it feels like a small dot.com company fronting it. Science breakthroughs don’t happen like this. They don’t occur in a tiny vacuum from one genius’ mind. And even if one genius mind is a factor behind it, there are massive teams from research to development behind these things … the whole impression I get here is that there’s what … half a dozen people involved in the launch of the teleportation company that I don’t even know has been tested yet … as a reader I’m thrust into this informationless point and I know NOTHING. I’ve been given nothing. I haven’t even seen anything outside mega protests around it. It feels like an Elon Musk promise to me. All this hype and we don’t see or hear anything about it. Just that it’s pissed off a lot of creationists for some weird reason.
The one thing I did love about this are the little news headlines between chapters. They’re the most detail we receive and the final comedic one usually has me giggling a bit.
I also find how the story unfolds frustrating. We are presented with a murder of a blind person, only for the same character guiding another blind person to see the murderer gunning for them. There’s a whole escape to safety scene and it isn’t until much later we discover that there’s a proper connection between the two blind (the one murdered and the one running) people and that’s this new teleportation technology company. But NOBODY, and I mean nobody. Not the police, not the second blind guy (who is the genius btw), nor the first victim’s family, nobody, connected the dots that this could be a crime against the business … you know, the same company that has a massive protest against it happening at the same time. The same company that has every religious body against it. Nobody thought that the death of the wife of the second head of the company might just be suspicious and for the company to take precautions … for that matter, why is nobody looking out for the company’s owners and employees from the get-go, considering the controversy surrounding everything? It just feels too farfetched. And yes there seems to be a bit of a police corruption theme happening but that doesn’t excuse the people working in the company from at least tinkering with the idea and taking precautions.
The fact we also live in a future technological society and there seems to be complete anonymity for the people working for the company, including its genius blind creator behind everything … it just bothers me, a lot.
And the whole idea that everything hangs on this one character who witnessed this murder but there is zero evidence is troubling. The entire premise hangs on this one aspect — That the C4U company has no proper protection protocols in place to not only safeguard the clients, but also the employees. I find it hard to believe that there isn’t some kind of “just in case” 3rd party recording is happening. Seems like an easy system where either employee or client can falsely accuse the other of some wrongdoing. There would 100% be some level of surveillance to ensure the safety/protection of both involved. I understand the employee herself not being able to record anything, but the company itself would want to protect itself as well. The one emergency tab we are shown, has shown to be woefully inefficient, even without the suspicious sabotage there is no way it would’ve prevented what happened, or caught the culprit.
There is no protection of clients or staff against any form of litigation. I would expect there would be a server that would at the very least transcribe all that occurred.
We do finally get Angula and TJ linking the crimes to the company, and perhaps it was the stress of the issue that caused the lag, but all characters acting in a similar fashion leaves me doubting this.
The story feels like it might turn into a time-travelling assassination hit job or something, trying to undo the past, perhaps religious zealots given the protesting … but that’s all a guess from me, and if I’m being honest, I’m not taken enough to want to keep reading on. I’m left completely frustrated and annoyed at the reactions of the people within the novel. Something that usually is a pretty big deal breaker for me.
