Geek Book Review: Resonance

A.J. Scudiere ResonanceA.J. Scudiere is the author of four novels: Resonance, Vengeance, God’s Eye, and Phoenix. I took on the difficult task of reading and reviewing them all. I am now proud to say: Mission Accomplished!

Resonance is about the Earth’s poles shifting. The book follows a geologist, a biologist, and two medical doctors who are brought together because they have all noticed that something strange is happening. People are contracting and dying from a strange illness and frogs in certain spots have six legs. The complaint I have given time and time again about Scudiere’s books is her absolute lack of character development. This book is no different. Instead of being able to infer character traits, you are repeatedly told each character’s traits. The character Dr. Brookwood, for example, is extremely intelligent. Did I learn this by her constant display of intelligence? No. I learned it from her colleague, Dr. Abellard saying it every fourth page.  six-legged frog

This book starts out alright. I was curious to see what was going to happen once the poles shifted. However, another problem of Scudiere’s I have come to notice is that even when she comes up with a good idea for a story, she doesn’t tell the story well. This book really starts to fall apart over halfway through. One thing is happening to some people and a different thing is happening to the rest of the people. They can’t figure out what could be causing the two different outcomes. Gender? Ethnicity? Geographical location? No correlation exists with any of those characteristics. Then, Dr. Brookwood (the really intelligent one) gives the dumbest theory possible. And instead of the other doctors telling her to get outta town, they say, “By George, I think she’s got it!” Or something to that effect. The ending to this book drags out about 100 pages too long. I was so bored with it that I was hard-pressed to retain anything I was reading. But, it doesn’t even matter because it turns out that they don’t even need to know why there are two outcomes. Nothing becomes of it. I think maybe Scudiere is paid by the word? The only thing I liked about the end of this book is that unlike Scudiere’s other books, this one does not end like a fairy tale with all forgiven and forgotten and everyone living happily ever after.

As with the rest of Scudiere’s books, I would not recommend this one, but if you feel so compelled to purchase it you can do so here.

You can also check out my reviews of Scudiere’s other books: Phoenix, God’s Eye, and Vengeance

Rating: 2 out of 5 mutated frogs

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a book burning to get to.

 

 

If you disagree with my review leave me a comment or yell at me on twitter @ScifiSapphire

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