This book was a really refreshing read for me. I loved exploring the idea of what would happen if we cloned some of the biggest historical figures and changed their circumstances. The debate of nature vs nurture is incredibly interesting to me and I couldn't wait to read where this book would take these characters. Unfortunately, there were too many ideas explored here and they didn't always work in my eyes. While I really liked reading about these characters and seeing them try to figure themselves out as other than a clone of someone else, I wasn't a big fan of the more fantastic elements of the story like the creatures, the cannibalism and regeneration. I wish the story was a bit more focused on one or two elements, instead of including so many different ideas, especially when some feel abandoned, like Kat's origins. That said, the book kept my interest and I definitely want to read the next one.

Disclaimer: I received a free e-book copy from NetGalley and the publisher, in exchange for an honest review.

For me, this was a fun read. This sci-fi (seemingly somewhat fantasy) novel includes characters who are clones of creative, intelligent people from history. It's a really fun, unique concept. A lot of work went into creating the situation of these characters, only for things to then spiral out of control. Some of the time-manipulation elements were confusing, but that was ultimately ok since the story itself was so far out there.

I think fans of creative science-fiction will enjoy the book, as long as they don't try to apply too much real science to it.

If you can compress time, so that in one small corner of the earth time passes much more slowly, you can have scientists and engineers make 10 years of discovery in a few minutes of earth time. Of course all great inventions get used for war, so the US is trying to make the most amazing weapons of the future. Russia and China are aware and trying to catch up or screw it up. What scientists would you use? Clones of the world’s great geniuses – Einstein, Da Vinci, etc. So these teenage clones who are just getting ready to be told who they are, and why, are tossed into the fray as the competition gets fierce. Very cleverly plotted and written, the Twin Paradox forces us to confront the nature vs nurture issue (are clones the same), new ideas of time travel, and of course, teen age angst and love. Well worth reading.

Thanks to the Publisher and Net Gallery for an advance copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

This is the book of the year! Since Michael Crichton passed away in 2008, there has been a dearth of truely great scientific thrillers- well not anymore.This story has all of the elements you would expect in a block buster 1) evil corporation, led by evil genius 2) cloning and the moral questions it brings, 3) monsters human and other, 4) things that go terribly terribly wrong, and 5) our band of gritty survivors that must figure out how to escape without being eaten or killed or destroying the world. Exciting stuff.
The basic premise is that evil corporation has figured out to bring the worlds greatest minds back from the dead via cloning and growing children. Evil corporation tried first with Issac Newton, and raised him in a lab without parents ( or a childhood) and while he turned into a genius, he has what you might call “relationship issues” and “ god complex”. Issac has Created some new math and built a super collider that can alter time. Great, imagine the advances it could bring! But then when airplanes start to fall from the sky, and some of the wrongly evolved creatures escape from the containment structure - evil corp must bring in the back up children that they started a few years Issac. This time raised by loving adoptive parents who send them to an advanced school, funded by evil corp. The teens Issace Newton 2, Albert Einstein, Martha Luther King, Katherine the great and Leonardo Da Vinci unaware of who they are until they are about 17 years old. Their identities are revealed and they are on the hook to figure out how to stop everything for going wrong.
I won’t tell you any more because the discoveries of what altering time does to the containment area are part of the fun of the story, suffice to say- some seriously messed up stuff happens. I also enjoyed the science part learning about history and properties of things like helium , echo locators and Various poisons.
I could easily see this book being made into a big budget movie- and my only ask PLEASE dont make the teens be smart assed annoying know it alls. They weren’t in the books- and shouldn't be in the movie.

The blurb suggests a good, interesting and compilated story ahead, but then that ends up being the problem with it. I felt the book was just pulling too many ideas together such clones, time loops/distortions, wormholes, monsters, evil corporations, and so on but misses out on the human aspect of it. I think this just had too many ideas in quite a short book that then wasn't able to pull them together.

Its told through the eyes of teenagers, who's actions didn't make much sense either. 'They want me to be a scientist but I want to play football, but i don't really want to play football so I guess I'll just be a scientist', and it goes on from there.

Not for me which is a shame

This review of The Twin Paradox by Charles Wachter is courtesy of NetGalley. #TheTwinParadox #NetGalley
Rating 3/5

Usually the concept of twins in the title will draw be to the book. That's certainly what pulled me to read the description and consider the book as one to review.

Overall, I have to say that the title is misleading. There really aren't any twins and while there's adventure and time manipulation, I wouldn't say there's paradox. As for the question mentioned in the description, "Do we get to choose who we are?", I would say that it's largely ignored in favor of the thriller portion.

Without any major spoilers, the story has some interesting ideas and premise. Assuming the time manipulation was possible, there are still some plot holes like ... how does a supposedly "perfectly balanced" system stay balanced once additional forces are added/removed?

It also turns out this is not exactly a standalone book which brings my rating down as well.

Thank you to NetGalley and to Trevaney Bay for this DRC.

A great premise that got lost in a lot of telling, and not very tight writing. The last part of the book also, unfortunately, felt very rushed. I skimmed over large sections of the book because I just wanted to get back to the story. I think this could make a fun movie (and possibly the author was thinking of it as a screenplay), but it didn't make for a great read.

A group of fast-tracked teens discovers their true origins and works together to solve some problems with a secret government project. The project seems to have implications that will make the world a better place. As they get deeper into the nuts and bolts, it's not clear whose side some of the other players are on. This fast-paced, inventive novel will appeal to fans of sci-fi thrillers.

The premise for this book is really fascinating- it’s like the human version of Jurassic Park. The point of the story is that messing with nature has consequences. I liked all of the characters, especially the kids (Kat, Alistair, Milk) and Jimmy, who has a rare ability to relax in dangerous situations. My criticism of the book is that it is filled with very technical/scientific theories and information in the fields of physics and quantum mechanics. I would have enjoyed the book more if it didn’t feel like I was reading a textbook. Clearly the author is really smart and either works in a scientific field or did a significant amount of research.

The premise sounded kind of cool so I had a lot of expectations from this book but the writing and a lot of the set-up were not doing it for me. I ultimately put this book down and I don't think I'll pick it back up. It needs more editing and polishing I think.

The book's blurb caught my attention. I'm not sure what I expected but The Twin Paradox had me more interested than I expected. The book snuck up on me and I was surprised at how much I enjoyed reading about a group of teenagers who were in an Honors Program that some were not sure they belonged. These kids were super smart but had no idea why they were together. There were some technical explanations that were a bit beyond me but I was hooked on the characters who were definitely unique. The author has an amazing imagination and is a good storyteller.

I received an Advanced Reader's Copy from Trevaney Bay through NetGalley. The opinions expressed are entirely my own.
#TheTwinParadox #NetGalley

I would like to thank Trevaney Bay and NetGalley for allowing me to read this ARC free for an honest review. The book starts with the death of Isaac Newton and people prying a tooth from his mouth. Almost 250 years later, in 1975, a collector in Russia has amassed tissue from many greats of history – De Vinci, Edison, Curie, Galileo, Darwin, Newton, etc. The collector is killed and his collection stolen by a doctor. Forty years later, a dozen young people are graduating early from high school. At the ceremony, they find out their true identities. They are clones of Albert Einstein, Martin Luther King, Jr., Leonardo Da Vinci, Issac Newton and Catherine the Great. Their names are Alastair, Milk, Leo, Zach and Kat and they are all somewhat in shock. Their school has taken money from a company named Gene-E Corp, who has taken lots of money from the American government, to give these kids the best education. Once they graduate, they will all be employed by Gene-E Corp, where their education will continue. And boy! Does it ever! They are flown to a secret instillation in Texas, where they learn Gene-E Corp has learned, not only how to clone people, but how to manipulate time. Each of the recent graduates find out messing with time may not be a good thing to do – especially when they are sharing their living space with cannibals. I’ll admit to never having taken a physics class, so I didn’t understand any of the scientific jargon. This story kept me reading because I liked the students and wanted to make sure they made it out of the complex. I liked Jimmy and his father, too. The question that stayed in my head throughout the reading was, “Exactly what age group was this book written for?” Because most of the characters were teenagers, I figured it must be young adult, but all the cloning, science race with Russia, and cannibalism makes me think it’s for an older audience.

The Twin Paradox - Charles Wachter


I received a free copy of Charles Wachter’s The Twin Paradox in return for my honest review. Well, they asked for it. Here's the book:

Begin by constructing a skeleton of “the hero’s journey” overlain by a skin of LOTR, stir in heaping helpings of Robert Ludlum’s The Holcroft Coventant, Nancy Freedman’s Joshua Son of None, and Michael Crichton’s Jurassic Park. Coat the entire recipe with pseudo-science too weak to fool a “Star Trek: The Next Generation” fan and sprinkle the result with word-usage errors and desultory research. You got yourself The Twin Paradox.

The Holcroft Covenant reference is to Ludlum’s sonnenkinder; children of the Third Reich born in secret to take over the world forty years after Hitler’s demise. Joshua Son of None gave Wachter the idea for cloning a dead world leader decades before Dolly. The reference to Jurassic Park will become clear, and the rest? I’ll explain.

A billionaire scientist collected the DNA of a slew of historical geniuses and grew a high-school class that included ersatz versions of Isaac Newton, MLK, Leonardo da Vinci, Catherine the Great, and Albert Einstein. Which is weird to begin with, ‘cause five is a pretty small graduating class…

Said billionaire, Teegen Ralls, (Warren Buffet meets Elon Musk?) also built himself a huge super-collider in Texas near Corpus Christi, constructed – for unknown reasons – partially on land and partially in the Gulf of Mexico, yet dry land ‘cause of a gigantic seawall. Seems rather stupid to go through that effort when he could have moved inland a few miles and been entirely on land…

Whatever, the compound is a time machine of sorts: when the collider is running, every three minutes outside the loop under the seawall equals ten years inside. It must be magic, though, because no one actually explains this effect.

The kids, of course, get coerced into being inside – a hellhole that bears a striking resemblance to Crichton’s dinosaur theme park – when the machine fires up. They're caught along with a bunch of the most heinous criminals ever to stride the planet (the Russian’s version of the same cloning program). The rush to escape is, of course, the expected endless string of disasters and near disasters. Naturally, the little geniuses do get out… otherwise there couldn’t be sequels, one of which is already in the works.

My thoughts? Predictable plotting, unlikeable characters, lousy science (guess Wachter’s film degrees didn’t include much STEM), and some irritating goofs. As for the goofs, will someone tell the author that you don’t hit the “breaks” on your vehicle and you don’t “peak out from under” something. Oh, yeah, and Corpus Christi gets an average of 30-plus inches of precipitation a year, far too much to be considered a desert. The deserts in Texas are several hundred miles west. While we’re at it, there is no liquid helium in the Panhandle (it's a gas), not to mention that it would be a pretty difficult feat to build a secret pipeline across six hundred miles of private property (there isn’t any public land to speak of in Texas).

While we're at it, will someone explain the difference between an oil rig and an offshore platform? Oh, and when the kids cut the helium pipeline cooling the collider's magnets, why didn't that shut the loop down, hmmm? Which raises another question, does Wachter know how cold liquid helium is? Four degrees above absolute zero, which pretty much makes it impossible to pump through a pipe.

I still might have bought this plot via MAJOR willing suspension of disbelief had the compound not been partially in the water. The giant seawall holding back the waters of the Gulf is a McGuffin of its own, necessary only because said water provides the ultimate danger to the hero and his fellowship on their journey.

Two stars.
copyright © 2021 scmrak

What would we do if we could clone Einstein? How about MLK? Leonardo Da Vinci? In this sci-fi epic adventure, modern science has created a whole new generation of geniuses, but that’s not all. There’s a time vortex on the coastline of Texas, a place where three minutes inside equals ten years in the rest of the world. With the teenage minds of some of history’s greatest thinkers and control to experiment and develop things in in an alternate time, the government’s unchecked power could lead to some great discoveries, or the end of the world as we know it.

Wow. What an ambitious book. I was all in for the first 50% or so, and after that, my interest started waning. I am impressed at the sheer hard sci-finess of it and how Wachter was able to keep that momentum going throughout the entire book, but it was just so much. I was way more interested in the history and background info than the storyline. The first chapter got me hooked and I really enjoyed the journey of discovery with the kids, but somewhere around their actual mission, I got a little exhausted and lost interest.

I’m not saying don’t read this book, because there’s some very cool stuff in here, just know it’s going to go off the rails, and it’s a lot of effort getting there. If you’re into hard sci-fi and a lot going on in a relatively short span of pages, definitely give it a go. There are so many cool things about it.

This was an interesting read in the beginning and sounded like a nice mix of science and science-fiction. But I had trouble getting through it in the later chapters. The characters were not well fleshed out. I am in the minority here. Most others found the book interesting, but for me it was a slog getting through parts of the book.

A big thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for providing me with a review copy.

An Engrossing, Suspenseful, And Different Time Travel Novel

Pieces of history are gathered one by one, a treasure collected by one man named Arcady. Isaac Newton’s molar, a piece of Leonardo DaVinci’s pelvis bone, hundreds of fragments of past greatness all in one place, a collection representing the worlds most famous people. The final piece, a small snippet of hair from his young daughter whom he calls Catherine the Great.

Deep beneath the oil platform, Jimmy Jones is welding a new blowout protection valve on the wellhead while the rest of the crew and their guests party on the oil platform above. It’s the Memorial Day Steel Beach party, an annual fun day of eating and drinking. No one could have predicted the coming events.

It would seem to be impossible to wind these two events into one story, but Charles Wachter has done it. The result is one of the most exciting and challenging science fiction books you will ever read. It is not a quick read, but a history and science filled tome crammed with information that is sometimes challenging to comprehend, all wrapped around the awesome premise of controlling time itself. Imagine living 10 years of your life while only three minutes passes in the real world.

Thank you, NetGalley for a free ARC copy of The Twin Paradox

Well, this was bonkers! A very fun ride, just when you think you know where it’s going it swerves in an entirely new direction. Clones, time travel, great thinkers, dictators, monsters, cannibals! Will definitely check out the sequel.

The Twin Paradox is a wonderful blend of science fact and science fiction. What happens when the government learns how to clone many of the greatest minds from throughout history with the intent of having those individuals work together to advance science? That is only half of the story as nothing is ever as straight-forward as it seems.

I have learned not to expect a real plot from TV shows and most films; these are made more for spectacle and actors’ placement than anything else. THE TWIN PARADOX felt more like a video draft than a book; it was a feature for descriptive visuals and place-creation. The plot and character development were all over the place; ultimately not making much sense. Would I have really chosen to read a book about cannibals in a biosphere experiment? Would anyone? This is a mixed bag of treats and weirdness for the science fiction lover. I received my copy from the publisher through NetGalley.

This was a fun read even though it got a bit silly when some of the greatest villains in history show up. Characters were interesting, pacing was fast, it was well written. It says something for the story when it keeps you engaged even when it gets a little over the top.