Convergence

by: Joseph Gellene

Available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Smashwords.

Synopsis:
How do you stop a killer who remembers everything you're about to do?

John Smith greatly enjoys his unusual life. He's wealthy, long-lived, and very well traveled. He jumps to the 21st century expecting to be reunited with his daughter but finds she has been brutally murdered. Under normal circumstances it was a simple matter to undo an untimely death but, in this case, the killer remembers multiple fact patterns and easily thwarts John's attempts. To save his daughter, John must overcome shifting fact patterns, a determined detective, and three versions of the killer. His research shows that he fails, but facts can be fluid.

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This book is The Time Traveler's Wife and The Matrix all rolled into one. It's full of suspense and action and lots of different "fact patterns" due to numerous "fact shifts". The way it is supposed to work is there are people who go from birth to death with no jumping around, they are called linears. Then there are people who jump all over the place through infinite possibilities and probabilities. Toss in some physics - ok I really don't fully understand it but in the story it does make sense.

When the people who jump around...the Ordinals...and enter a new fact pattern, they generally forget anything else. They only know what is real where they are at. It saves their sanity. A few people can remember it all, all the shifts and possibilities, and these people wind up insane - there just isn't any other way.

The plot? An older Ordinal named John Smith finds his daughter murdered and while avoiding run ins with the police finds an abandoned little girl who is a new ordinal. He takes her back to his safe house where she is cared for by the caretakers. As an adult she is back to exact revenge against the man who murdered her parents...whoever that is. Then there is the police officer, a rookie who meets up with - or has a convergence - with his older and much older selves.

Criticism? Like the Time Travelers Wife, it gets hard to follow when all the characters and the facts of the story are shifting, it constantly changes throughout the story, and really kicks up toward the end.

You get to know the characters just enough. I'd have loved more background information on John Smith and Parker, two central characters that just don't get enough history or personality into the story.

That being said, I enjoyed the story. I had a hard time getting started, but by the time I reached the end I couldn't put it down. It's a great story if you can keep the facts straight. But don't feel bad if you can't, sometimes the characters couldn't either. lol