Thursday, November 12, 2015

Review: Touch

Touch Touch by Claire North
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I loved the author's previous book The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August and enjoyed it. Touch has a somewhat similar premise: the main character can 'jump' from one person to another simply by touching skin to skin. For the person who is jumped into, time simply stops for their consciousness until she(?) jumps into someone else. In this way, beings like this can leap from one end of a crowded train in seconds without most people even knowing they've been 'out of it' at all. It's a fascinating idea, that these people never really die, they just find someone to touch and vacate a dying body before it can be completely killed. Presumably, if they can't touch anyone and the body dies, so too does the extra consciousness inside.

So, this revolves around someone targeting the "vessel" in whom Kepler was currently living, killer that body leaving just enough time for Kepler to leap into nearby, and then through the crowd to the killer's body eventually. She essentially kidnaps that body, ties it up, switches to someone else, questions the returned-to-consciousness person she was inhabiting--she can't read the mind of the person she's inside--switches back. And forth, and continues on the run because she's trying to find out not only why the body she was in had to be killed but also why someone is trying to kill her consciousness.

It's fun, rollicking along adventure-story style...and then the end happens and sort of pours cold water on the whole book. The first 98% of the book is 5 stars for me. The last few pages...not so much.

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