The Fold

The FoldI recently finished reading Peter Clines’ novel, The Fold. It was one of those books where I had no clue what to read, so I just picked one that looked interesting. I am glad I went with this one. It was definitely something a good bit different. I am going to warn everyone, there are spoilers from here on out.

The book follows Mike Erickson, who has perfect memory. Anything he sees or hears, he can remember it. He can then replay it in his head and do insane analysis. He works as a high school English teacher, but his friend, who works for the government wants him to help with a project.

Turns out the group he is helping has invented instant teleportation. The fold space around an object and it travels instantaneously to another destination. This could be the greatest invention of all time. The group keeps everything secret and they do not want to go public until everything is perfect. They claim it is not dangerous at all, but Mike’s friend has his doubts. He thinks something is off.

Mike is amazed by the technology and right away starts picking up on some of the weirdness going on with the group. This was probably the books main strength. Teasing us with what is happening. I figured it out, well at least  for the most part. Again, here is a spoiler. I figured that something was going on when they went into the rings. It must be connecting to a parallel universe. That was the only thing that could explain the prologue with the other character coming home and not recognizing his wife.

I was right about the parallel universe thing, but I did not really expect the book to take the direction it went next. Instead of asking the really heady questions about how would Mike know if he was a different Mike or not, and how would that affect him with his perfect memory.

Instead, we find out that there are Alpha Predators that are trying to come into this universe and when they do they destroy everything. After the day is saved, Mike meets a pair of scientists who say they work for a mysterious group who basically protects the world from those sorts of things. She even describes some of the things Mike witnessed. I wonder if this was something from another of his novels?

I loved the change of pace. It was pretty intense during the fights with the monsters. This book was definitely good enough for me to want to check out Peter Clines other stuff. Plus I hope he does more books with Mike Erickson…

Author: Ngewo