Slipstream

Slipstream
by Michael Offutt
(4/5 stars)

Slipstream starts off simply enough.  Jordan Pendragon lives in Salt Lake City.  He's a star hockey player on his high school team.  All the girls want him, but he's not all that interested in them.  Then he goes out with his sister and a couple of friends and there's an accident that lands Jordan in the hospital.  He sees a young man kill a fellow patient.  Later Jordan sees that young man again and after an altercation finds a strange bracelet.

While at a state fair with his sister and a couple of friends, Jordan comes under attack.  With the help of the young man who owned the bracelet, they escape only to find themselves in a parallel universe.  This parallel universe is similar to ours in some ways, but very different in others.  In this universe much of the world has been laid to waste.  A corrupt artificial intelligence known as the Shadow has taken over. What the Shadow fears more than anything is death, which necessitates it sucking the life out of people.

Jordan and his sister end up being rescued by some freedom fighters trying to defeat the Shadow by freeing another AI known as the Light.  To do that involves Jordan becoming a hockey star.  But even that is extremely dangerous in this world.

This plot has so many twists and turns that it would take far too long into going through all of them.  It would also reveal too much of the plot and we wouldn't want any "spoilers" right?  It is the most imaginative book of any genre I've read in quite a while.

The book would be even better if the publisher had hired a competent editor.  I've seen self-published books with fewer mistakes.  I don't know about you, but I find that distracting.  Maybe at some point they can put out a revised edition.

That is all.