SHIFT

I’m glad I just received the third book in the series, to prompt me to go back and read the first book.  This was an awesome, exciting ride!

Shift is about sixteen year old Scott Tyler, an average high school student living the typical teenager life of school and friends and girls and a fragile family life.  A a party with a friend, Scott wants to impress a new girl by doing something dangerous and stupid (yes, this sounds like a typical teenage boy!).  When his stunt fails, something happens and suddenly Scott appears to be in a different reality, in which is didn’t attempt the stunt after all.  The new girl grabs him, telling him how stupid that was, though she’s not referring to the stunt, and she hustles him away before the authorities come.  From that moment on, Scott’s life will never be the same.

Scott is a “shifter.”

A shifter is someone with the ability to shift the reality around themselves to one of the other realities — let’s say that there are three donuts in front of me.  I take a bite of one but decide I don’t like that donut, so I ‘shift’ to the reality where I take a bite of the middle donut, which also doesn’t taste good, so I shift to the reality where I eat the third donut, or no donuts at all.  That, essentially, is what a shifter can do

With the help of the attractive young lady, Aubrey, Scott joins ARES (Agency for the Regulation and Evaluation of Shifters), an organization aimed at teaching shifters the strengths and weaknesses of their abilities.  For instance: A shifter cannot change the reality if there’s someone with stronger shifting abilities making other shifts.  Shifters can only change the realities in which they are experiencing.  Shifting abilities disappear as the individual gets older.

Or at least that’s what they are taught.

The main plot comes about as Scott and Aubrey learn that not everything they’ve been taught is true and that sometimes the truth is much darker than they can even suspect.  Scott’s abilities are greater than anyone Aubrey’s ever met … the fact that he can retain memories from previous shifts is not typical.  Scott and Aubrey play a cat-and-mouse game, never quite sure who the enemy is, but confident that the enemy is doing something nefarious.

The book moves along quickly.  Very quickly.  I am shocked to see that it was 312 pages.  I would have guessed 150, judging by how quick a read it was.  Is this a good thing?  Bad thing?  You decide.  I know I enjoyed it, couldn’t wait to turn the page, and the writing was such that it urged my page-turning.  At the same time, because it didn’t give me much time to reflect, instead constantly moving me to the next page, I sometimes felt I missed a little character development or reflection moment.

For the teen readers who’ve grown up with fast-paced media and electronics, this book may be just the ticket to keeping their attention to the printed word, and the concept is attractive.

Looking for a good book?  Shift by Kim Curran is a fast-paced sci-fi action story that will surely get and hold a teen readers’ attention.

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Shift

author: Kim Curran

series: Shift #1

publisher: Strange Chemistry

ISBN: 1908844043

paperback, 312 pages

CONTROL

In this second installment of the Shift series, Shifter Scott Tyler takes on a more active role within the group ARES (Agency for the Regulation and Evaluation of Shifters).  Picking up where the first book left off, Scott and Aubrey are working together on an assignment to pick up and bring in all the adults who were a part of Project Ganymede (where adults were implanted with a portion of a healthy brain in order to extend the ability to shift).  The last person on their list is a Frank Anderson, whom they are having trouble tracking down.

Once Frank is found (I don’t want to give away too much), things are not what the appear to be.  There will be a battle of wills as part of the climax of the book, and a shift will happen, which will be the only thing to save some people from certain death and then …  nothing.  End of book.  Buy the next one.

Yeah…you know how I feel about ending books like this.  It’s a cheap shot on the part of publishers to try to force people to buy the next book.  Cheap.  Shot.  If a book is well written and interesting and the characters are well crafted, you don’t need to resort to cheap shots.  If they are not well done, even a cheap shot isn’t going to get people to buy the next book.  So why do it!?

Lack of ending aside, this book didn’t quite manage to have the same appeal and excitement as the first book, Shift.   It tries.  It tries very hard.  But it tries in rather the wrong way.

The book starts out with Scott and Aubrey looking for one of the adults who had been part of Project Ganymede.  Their search brings them to an underground fight club.  To gain access, scrawny, teen-aged Scott has to enlist as a challenger to fight the undefeated champ.  Thanks to his ability to shift, and the fact that he’s a “fixer” (someone who can prevent others from shifting), Scott manages to win the fight.  It’s a well-written sequence, very exciting and thrilling.  But even as I was reading it I kept thinking to myslef…wow…this Scott has really changed since the last book.  He’s much more confident and aggressive than the Scott we left in the last book.  The difference didn’t bother me…it was just noted.  But then, later in the book, he reverted back to the more shy, timid Scott and I was annoyed at either the lack of consistency in the character, or change in his personality.  Either way, it didn’t feel right.

The relationship with Aubrey is much more prominent here, and it works quite well.  We really buy in to what they feel toward one another and the depth of their relationship, both working and personal.  It is this relationship building that provides the spark in the book and kept me reading.  The storyline seemed quite secondary.

Scott is still burdened with the ability to remember different, changed realities after shifting, but the ability he showed at the end of Shift, something that was so unusual that there were only rumors of its possibility.  I was expecting much more with this ability, but felt cheated.  It could have been (seemed destined to be) the focus of the story based on book one, but that wasn’t the case.

All in all, this feels like a classic book two… a bit of a let down that doesn’t follow up on where book one left off, but instead focusses on being a teaser to book three.

Even so, this is still a really remarkable part of the series and anyone who’s read book one and anticipates wanting to read book three, will want to make sure this is on the reading list as well.

Looking for a good book?  Book two in the “Shift” series, Control, stumbles a bit as it prepares the reader for book three, though the relationship building is very successful.

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Control

author: Kim Curran

series: Shift #2

publisher: Strange Chemistry

ISBN: 1908844159

paperback, 350 pages

DELETE

** WARNING — POTENTIAL SPOILERS FOR ALL THREE BOOKS IN THE SERIES AHEAD — WARNING **

This third installment in the “Shift” series is a bit of a departure, though a strong one.  Whereas the first two books were sci-fi adventure, this one is much more of a psychological drama/adventure with touches of sci-fi.  It is a brilliant conclusion to the story set up in Control.

**SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER**

At the end of Control (which wasn’t an ending so much as a cliff-hanger to this book), teenaged ARES (Agency for the Regulation and Evaluation of Shifters) agent Scott Tyler is in a battle to restore the world to its rightful path as a rogue shifter (someone, like Scott, who has the ability to change events by ‘shifting’ to an alternate reality) has brought about much destruction.  His plan works, but a little too well.  The rogue shifter changes almost everything that had been shifted, putting Scott in to a reality so vastly different, he couldn’t possibly have anticipated it.  Among the many and varied differences with this new reality from what he knew before, he is the Commander of ARES; he and Aubrey not only don’t have a relationship, she’s a soldier for ARES and only knows him by his title; there is a war going on and a group of radicals looking to eliminate all shifters; his sister is about to take a shifter test to determine her abilities.

To complicate this new life (as if it needed any more complication), Scott is of a rare breed of shifters who remembers all his past realities … those realities that he’s shifted out of.  But in this book, he goes one step further … he is in a constant battle with himself.  His psyche, the one that lived and grew in his body since birth and for whom this reality has been a constant, is pushing for Scott to act in a specific manner … the manner which got him put in command of ARES and is much stronger and more aggressive.  But the Scott Tyler who shifted into the body…the Scott Tyler we’ve been reading about for two and a half books, is trying to right things that he thinks is wrong, having to learn how things happen along the way and trying to shove his own psyche aside.

It’s a tremendous challenge to write, and author Kim Curran weaves the story quite well.  The obstacles Scott faces are strong.  He’s up against his new reality (“man vs nature”); other people, some who were friends, and some former enemies who are now friends )”man vs man”); and of course he’s battling his own inner psyche (“man vs himself”).  These are strong, high concepts, realized efficiently in an adventure book for teen readers.

Having read the three books successively, the characters and the situations were quite clear to me.  I’m not sure how well this would read if I hadn’t read Control right before it.  However, I think this would read much better alone than Control would read on its own.

I couldn’t help but wonder how Scott was going to get out of his situation, and I think Curran brings the story to a very appropriate conclusion.

Strange Chemistry has proven itself as a powerhouse in the YA market, and this series adds to that reputation.

Looking for a good book?  Delete by Kim Curran is a strong, rousing book in the Shift series.  Highly recommended.

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Delete

author: Kim Curran

series: Shift #3

publisher: Strange Chemistry

ISBN: 1783450088

paperback

ENTIRE SERIES RATING:  4 stars