The Book:
Book Title: The Punch Escrow
Book Author: Tal M. Klein
Page Count: 319
Publishing Date: July 25, 2017
Publisher: Geek & Sundry
Date Read: September 1st, 2017
The Review:
“We humans have an innate need to get from A to B faster so we could do C sooner. We’ve never gotten too caught up in the means or consequences of transport.”
The Punch Escrow is inventive, astounding, and intense! This one will take you on an unforgettable ride to the future! Prepare for twists and turns, action, humor, and a thought provoking plot.
The Plot: The Punch Escrow takes place in the year 2147 where teleportation is the main mode of transportation, people decide when and how they age with nanotechnology, each person has a neural transplanted comm system, and pretty much everything is automated or run by artificial intelligence. Joel Byram is on his way to Costa Rica to meet his wife for a second honeymoon when something goes terribly wrong with the teleport. He teleports to Costa Rica, but he doesn’t. Suddenly, there is another Joel in Costa Rica, meeting with his wife, and taking over his comms and identity. Now New York Joel is on the run from the corporation that controls the teleportation system, and from the religious group that is set out to destroy the company.
I don’t know if I have any words that can properly represent this book. I was blown away by the immense amount of creativity that Klein has shown with this story! This one is going down as a “one sitting read” because I could not put it down!
The Punch Escrow is one of those books that provokes deep thoughts about the future, technology, and humanity. I can tell that the author spent a tremendous amount of time building this highly imaginative world for us to fall in to! The book has awesome foot note details that help us delve in to the “history” of the world, and the writing style has an immense amount of detail and imagery to help us really see the story.
I really loved the plot. I felt like it really involved me, and I was thoroughly surprised at every twist and turn. When I arrived at the “big reveal” of the story, and the secret behind the teleportation system, my mind was blown! This plot revelation was unbelievable, incredible, and terrifying! I think I would have had the same reaction the main character had if I had found out this secret in reality.
I really enjoyed reading the story from Joel’s perspective. He was an interesting character. He was intelligent, had a funny sense of humor, had decent morals, and ended up being pretty brave and heroic! I really loved his admiration for the 80’s (1980’s)! Klein did a fantastic job with getting us in Joel’s head and making us feel like we were caught in this crazy situation with him.
I enjoyed the rest of the characters. I felt like they had just enough development to help me understand their personalities and roles in the story. I liked Joel’s wife, Sylvia. I was intrigued by Joel 2, and I really loved the “mad scientist” villainous character!
This one made it in my top list of Science Fiction novels! It had an incredible plot, profound writing style, developed characters, and awesome plot twists! I really loved the Princess Bride reference and 80’s song title chapter names! There were so many fun science aspects in the story that I felt like the guys from The Big Bang Theory would approve of this book!
“The Punch Escrow was brilliant, if only for its simplicity: an ephemeral cache of the thing being teleported.”
Quotes used are from the book, written by the author.
Thank you to Wunderkind PR for sending me this free review copy in exchange for my honest review!
Darque Dreamer
Blogger/ Punk Rocker / Quirky Housewife
This sounds great! I didn’t even know Geek & Sundry was doing publishing!
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So Good Reads says Geek & Sundry and the book says Inkshares, and when I type both in to google I get this: http://geekandsundry.com/tag/inkshares/
Very interesting. I really loved this book though, so if you give it a shot, let me know what you think!
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This sounds so good.
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It was seriously awesome! Give it a read and let me know what you think!!
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Teleportation?! Wait, this needs to go on my TBR right now, that story sounds SO cool. I dream of being able to teleport someday ahah so this sounds like the kind of book for me 😛 So happy to hear you loved reading this book 🙂
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Oh you are going to love this one!! It was so good! I can’t wait to see what you think!
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oh my god, what a fantastic review!! this made me immediately wanting to read that book! it sounds right up my alley! 😍😍😍
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YASS!! Go get a copy woman!! I LOVED it! ❤
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aaaahhh, so many books, so little time! 😱😱😱
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I know it!
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I’m part of an audiobook tour for this book and I’m really excited to get lost in this world! It sounds so intriguing. I can’t wait to read it – I’m really glad to hear that you liked it. Great review!
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I look forward to seeing what you think!!
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Oh! I’m reviewing this like next week! Glad to see your review.
Joel really was a great character, wasn’t he. I didn’t have a single qualm with this book! It was just so good. The ending seemed like it will have a sequel, did you also feel like that?
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I am excited to see your review!! I really liked Joel and I agree about the ending. I can’t wait to read more from Tal!
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Reblogged this on The Biblioanthropologist and commented:
Read This Book!
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You beat me to it! I just started.
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You are going to love this one!! ❤
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Sounds awesome!!!! Thanks for sharing lovely!💖
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💖
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Interesting concept. Teleportation would make my life so much easier!
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Oh I know!! I can’t remember if you enjoy SciFi or not. If you do you would love this one!
BTW, I started reading a book I got from an author for a review request called Three Fingered Jack Davis and wondered if it would be something you would be interested in reading to review and I could send him your way.
Here is the synopsis:
Three-fingered Jack Davis and Jesse James Hofstetler operate a dope house in Detroit. They sell some black tar heroin laced with carfentanyl, a drug used to tranquilize elephants, to a house full of addicts. Several of the addicts overdose and now Jack and Jesse are stuck with a number of dead bodies to deal with.
The two men aren’t evil, not in the sense of a serial killer, but under the law they have committed murder. But they also have a very human side, Jack takes in a young addict named Posie and offers her protection, and Jesse saves the life of an overdosed girl called Imogene, who goes by the name of Im. Looking for refuge they hook up with Marielle, nicknamed Hell, a prostitute who owns a house of ill repute in the neighborhood.
The lives of the five become intertwined as they are investigated by tough, but fair, Detroit homicide detective Bonnie Benham. The story proceeds through the perilous habitat of drug users, dealers and detectives to an unusual, but just, conclusion.
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This sounds really neat. I’m always intrigued by the idea of teleportation. Can you imagine how much more reading time we’d have?!
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Oh my gosh, I know!! I would love to be able to teleport!
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SAME! Or apparate. 😉
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😉
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Sounds fascinating! Will add to ky TBR 😀😀
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Hooray! 😀 Let me know what you think when you get to it!
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Will do! Thank you so much for the recommendation 😊
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😊 Anytime!
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I’ve always wanted to be able to teleport lol. The premise for this sounds so interesting though! And what you said about the big reveal already has me curious. This sounds great, I may have to give it a read!
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I think you will really enjoy it!
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