Book Review: Seven Point Eight by Marie Harbon

For today’s Book Review Tuesday, we are going on a wild sci-fi ride, courtesy of author Marie Harbon. I contacted Marie a long time ago (I’m so sorry for the delay Marie!) in response to her request for reviewers which was kindly put out by Kate at Reads, Reviews & Recommends back in August. My review copy was provided free of charge by the author.

As I have no doubt mentioned once or twice before (teehee), I LOVE science fiction. I especially love science fiction written by women – which is often in short supply. So when I saw that Marie had a “volume 1” (hooray, a series!) book about quantum physics and the mysterious number – the eponymous 7.8 – that underpins all the mysteries of the universe, I was immediately intrigued. I read the sample on Amazon.com and knew it’d be one I’d enjoy.

And I was right.

Yay, me!

Seven Point Eight is a great big bear of a book in the best possible way. It weighs in at a pleasantly substantial 460+ pages – and every page is chock-a-block full of quantum theory, wildly idiosyncratic characters, out-of-body experiences, weird occurrences, and loose ends, all of which are tied together with a fanciful yet plausible conception of the grand unifying theory underlying the world around us. Oh yeah, and there’s some sex, drugs, and rock-and-roll thrown in for kicks.

Hooray, she said!

There are some slightly confusing elements. There are a few characters introduced – and heavily involved – in the initial chapters that then disappear for much of the remainder of the book. The narrative shifts between third person and first person throughout the course of the story, and the narrator-journal dichotomy sometimes required a paragraph/two before I caught up on the shift. Without the textual cues – the first person portions are in regular print, the third in italics – I would have found them much more confusing because the shifts in perspective sometimes occur with the same characters, mid-situation.

The story is a cliff-hanger in the best possible way. You are thrown a curve ball at the end that serves as a great set-up for the next installment in the chronicle. When I first reached the end, the curve threw me; in hindsight, I realize it was alluded to ever so slightly in earlier sections of the book, through events/explanations whose importance was understated at the time. These allusions only heightened my suspense and left me with a greater “hmm, where WILL it go next?!” sense than I originally had – a very good thing, to my mind.

Now I just have to wait for the next book… Grr. Argh. 😉