The Punch Escrow by Tal M. Klein

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!

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Darque Dreamer

Blogger/ Punk Rocker / Quirky Housewife

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