Elsewhere by Dean Koontz

I’ve read a lot of these dimension-hopping novels, so I sort of surprised myself when I picked up Elsewhere. The plot is familiar, and so are the characters; in many ways it’s a good book to pick up when you don’t want to work your brain too hard.

Jeffy lives a life of quiet contentment with his precocious eleven-year -old daughter, Amity. Their near-idyllic life is torn apart when a vagrant Jeffy’s befriended turns out to be a renowned quantum physicist, who gives Jeffy the Key To Everything: a device that transports “passengers” to alternate realities.

Okay, first off, it’s a good book: engaging, well-written, with a light lyrical style which may have put it in the YA category if not for the over-the-top brutality of the main antagonist.

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Relic by Alan Dean Foster

Meet Ruslan, the acerbic last survivor of the human race, which has chosen to eradicate itself throughout the galaxy by engineering a virus without thinking that maybe engineering a cure would’ve been a good idea too. After spending decades wandering his homeworld alone, Ruslan is discovered by a benevolent alien race called the Myssari, who take him back to their planet to live out his final years as their honoured guest and much-loved research project. The Mysarri treat Ruslan very well, but the last human grows restless; he longs for true companionship, so he strikes a reluctant bargain with his benefactors. If they help him search the universe for the lost planet Earth, where he might find another survivor (hopefully female), he promises (and this is where the “reluctant” part comes in) to let them use his genetic material in a somewhat misguided scheme to restart the human race. (I mean why, for God’s sake – we’re a danger to everything everywhere.)

So let’s get the first question out the way: is the book any good?
Short answer: Hell, yes.

Okay, next question: why?

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