| Date: 14 April 2011, 06:44
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It's good to see this book back in print after being unavailable for a long time. Perhaps it is a sign that Steven Gould is finally getting the recognition he deserves as a writer. Jumper was a great book, and Gould's next few books were not marketed as widely as a writer of his calibre should be. Despite looking for something new from him every month or so at the local Borders book store, I never even knew about his third and fourth books until his fifth came out recently.
Jumper was his first, and it was given to me by a friend who knew I was hard to please in my reading preferences. I have to say that this was one of the most enjoyable books I've ever read. As you can read in the synopsis, the main character, Davey, gains the ability to teleport. But unlike many writers who would focus the story on how and why he developed this ability, Gould instead writes about how an intelligent but not-quite-mature teenager might react to having this new ability. The actual science of it is never explained, but that doesn't detract from the story. The story is not about the ability. It's about the young man who has the ability.
Davey's reactions to suddenly finding himself with this ability are far more human than the urge to find out why. Unable to figure out why, he instead focuses on what to do with it. The early part is filled with self-serving trips to acquire stuff, and through the course of the story, Davey realizes that even these seemingly harmless actions have consequences. Some of the complications that arise later in the story are a direct result of his early endeavors with teleportation.
But Gould does not center the entire story on Davey's power. Life goes on, and the world around Davey proceeds apace even as he experiments. But when something happens to his mother, Davey uses his teleportation abilities to get to the bottom of it, and ends up in a complex scenario that Gould resolve sensibly and surprisingly.
To say any more would give away too much of the story. But this was a great book, I recommend it, and now that it's available again, I'm going to buy another copy (I gave mine away to another friend with discriminating reading tastes).
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