Book Review - Reflex (2005)

Regarding Jumper series, i had read the first book, seen its first adaptation, and had a pretty much different opinion toward both. Thereore, my initial reluctance toward the second book was very justified. However, it's turned out that given the familiarity with both the prominent characters from the first book, i couldn't put down the book and finished it in a go until 2 a.m on a working day.

Reflex published twelve years after the first book, and the event depicted in this book happened eleven years after the conclusion in the first book. David Rice, the only teleporter known in the world was married to Millie Harrison. Millie wants a child, Davy doesn't. The book begins with the argument amongst both. After leaving Millie on their shelter (which mostly inacessible via normal means except by teleporter), David went to see his NSA handle. When Davy doesn't return for a couple of days, Millie's anger turns to fear as what force could stalled a teleporter like Davy where no prisons could contain him? For the length of the book, the chapters alternating between Davy and Millie. Davy tries to unraveled the mystery behind his containment, and Millie discovers that after being the second most frequent person to experience teleport, she was able to teleport as well. Honing her newly acquired skill, she tries to unravel the clues to search for her missing husband.

Steven Gould, as much as i shunned him for his involvement in writing the film version of Jumper manages to provide a convincing reasoning to established the turn of events in this book, and for the most part keep the book as a light and a quick action-packed story which had it turns into a film, would be a lot more easier and exciting than the first book. The only new important character to introduce in this book was the nemesis and he doesn't take a lot of space and quite frankly, not interesting enough to demand more development and therefore made the other characters, characters we know and love from the first book (given that you loved the first book, of course, if not, well, then bother) considerably had more attention. It would seems to me that Steven Gould knew that in every successfull series, the first book was merely act as an introduction, whereas the second book is where the fun really begins. Well, usually.

There's however one scene that made me frown. This scene is so peculiar, so out of context that it would seems to me that Steven was bragged about his knowledge about cults and beliefs of Central American people. When i read it for the first time, i was brimming with anticipation that somehow Davy, had his skills because he's the last of his tribe, or something with similar exotic feels like that. Alas, even after the book concludes itself, all that knowledge - if it is a real knowledge, and not some of Steven's fruit of imagination - feels more and more like a filler with almost to zero importance to overall of the story.

The story also features a highly intricate intrigue involving governmental agencies that actually more suitable to a spy-fiction novel.

For a literary work, i would recommend this book only given the premise that you liked the first book. Read it or ignore it, you won't missed a thing. Reflex would be more enjoyable if you had read Jumper first. But you don't need to read Reflex if reading it was merely for the sake of continuing the serie.