MultiReal (Volume 2 of the Jump 225 Trilogy) by David Louis Edelman
01/07/2008 . Source: Geoff Willmetts 
pub: Pyr/Prometheus Books. 518 page enlarged paperback. Price: $15.00 (US). ISBN: 978-1-59102-647-1. Buy MultiReal in the USA - or Buy MultiReal in the UK  check out website: www.pyrsf.com
It's been a little while since I read the first book, 'Infoquake', in the 'Jump 225' trilogy and throwing myself in without a recap at the front of the book wasn't a good idea to remind myself of all that was going on. It wasn't until I was a third of the way through the book that I spotted the recap as the first of eight appendixes of fifty-eight pages length at the back. Having read them all when I got to the end, it became patently obvious that I should have read them all first. They don't spoil the story but they do fill in some knowledge gaps, especially with the glossary if you need exact definitions. Obviously, much of this must have come from author Edelman's own notes. What makes it wrong is that much of this information really needed to be incorporated within the confines of the story. It's like looking at a painting and being told about what you haven't seen. The skill in any storytelling is in putting the information in context and letting the picture build up in the reader's mind. I frequently came away from reading this book thinking Edelman has internalised too much. He knows what is going on but hasn't confided enough knowledge to the reader which is a big mistake. None of this is helped by the fact that he's pushing so much material into the story that there is little room for the characters to breath so this time we don't see so much depth with their personalities.
MultiReal is a new revolutionary type of cybertech which genius Natch was about to release onto cyberspace when a lot of interested parties, including the political council, wanted to take control. This second volume follows Natch being thrown out of his own company and the various factions after him as he attempts to regain control of MultiReal and different allies surfacing who were once his enemies. Things aren't helped that Jana at the company has been ordered to put MultiReal in order herself.
That's the plot in a nutshell. A lot of the book is devoted to council meetings and discussions to the point that you wonder what this MultiReal is all about in the first place. There is a brief demonstration showing you can be in more than one place at once but the whole point of stories relies on 'Do, not say' which when neglected can often leave you wondering what the point of the story is and certainly needed to be reaffirmed a lot more than it has in this volume.
As I commented above, I think Edelman scrambled to get everything in and this ended up neglecting the characters in favour of events. A more experienced writer might have gone over the plot and built up the elements where it counted the most and shortened other areas to put everything in properly. I can only hope that the final volume at least makes these problems worth working through for a decent ending.
GF Willmetts |
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