As my best GR friends know, I've been a science fiction fan since I was a teenager and have read a lot of SF books. I’m also an avid reader of science magazines.

This novel tells us three very imaginative stories in two different periods, one close enough to ours, the two others very far from the first (thousands of years). It plays on all fronts: science (especially nanotechnology and physics), singularity, Big Bang, religion, politics, parallel universes, aliens, sentient robots and one could almost say "time travel" since it goes from a near future to a future more distant and vice versa and a god wants to send our world back to square one.

The characters all have their own personality and it shows in the dialogues; which few authors do as well. The author knows about hard sciences and he explains everything very well; it's understandable even for laymen. And there is not one mistake in all the 399 pages of this book.

But unfortunately, if the main intrigue is interesting, the abrupt passages between eras are sometimes confusing. The story is more told than shown. And it drags on, especially toward the end. I think the editor could have condensed the verbose final part; a final that isn't really one, because we never know what exactly links these futures or where the author is going precisely with all that. We can't say that it's a cliffhanger, but we feel that the author wanted to deprive us of information that we would eventually get in a sequel.

I find peculiar that it's the readers who say they aren't familiar with science fiction who seem to have most appreciated this novel; maybe because they have nothing to compare it. Or it's just me who finds that the author wanted to do too much with all his themes and too well with his jumps in time and from one universe to another. I don't know.

However, like others, I'm not sure if I was sufficiently captivated by this first book to want to read the sequels. But I must say that I have hundreds of books in many genres waiting to be read in my Kindle reader.

My thanks to Netgalley, the publisher and the author for providing me with an eARC of this interesting novel.

There is, in the further reaches of the universe, a god of Order, bringing the forces of Chaos and Darkness to heel. This is Alum, who aims to bring stability and prosperity to an evet-expanding universe of planets and asteroids, managed by humans and their yo-called cyber mechanical servitors.
Suddenly, a new prophet emerges, but not one of Alum's making. Darak instead hints that natural life and eco systems are being destroyed to make way for a system that is ultimately stagnant. Only Chaos with its inherent instabity and openness to Change can represent the New Way.
A wormhole slide through space and time brings us to the experiments in bio technology that will be capable of augmenting human intelligence into so much more. The child of one of its pioneers, Darian Leigh, is about to reveal how whole new universes may be generated through the manipulation of sub-Quantum particles.
But Darian has enemies from within a divided continent that was once the USA. A fundamentalist faction is determined to put a stop to what is perceived as his arrogant, atheist hubris.
This novel is not a standalone! Before a mini universe is created in lab conditions, it does seem as though some of these original earthlings will become part of this new world, though it is not revealed yet, which of these will become Alum ( though it may be posy to guess). Paul Anlee hopes to get his emerging new readership hooked from this original bite from the apple.
Even so, here is hard SF at its most audacious. The Final Frontier may be reached, or perhaps breached, though applied quantum physics and bio technology, as much as through building rockets.
An important theme seems to lie within a die tic argument on how the least attractive of two world views have clashed. The fanatical and unsophisticated world views of Fundamentalists who nevertheless hold political power is shown to be at loggerheads with a world devoid of both gods and the hope of any ultimate meaning to life.
How this plays out however, will have to be sent though, in the sequels to this first in the series.

Thankyou to NetGalley, BooksGoSocial and Paul Anlee for the opportunity to read a copy of The Reality Thief in exchange for an honest and unbiased review.
Unfortunately, I struggled to finish this book. I felt like I was missing something in the storyline. Not a book for me

I received a free copy of this book from NetGalley in return for an honest review.

I've given this two stars, although at times it may have been a 4, and for the most part it was a solid 3, reduced to 2 in the last 100 pages or so as the outcome became increasingly inevitable and tiresome.

It is hard to know how to review this book which is partly comparative religion essay, partly physics lecture, partly solid sci-fi with sentient "cybrid" robots. Unfortunately the science and religion rather drag the sci-fi down and obscure what would otherwise be an engaging tale.

Not sure if I'll look to pick up the second and third books in this series, the pacing of the story needs to pick up.

The reality thief 3.5⭐️

If you could build a machine that changed the fundamental laws of nature what would you do with that power?

We flip between past and present connecting the two tenses with the experiment which flowed seemlessly.

Syfy- dystopian- futuristic just alot of components going on.
Im picky for my syfy books, they have to complex but understandable, descriptive world but not to extravagant thay i cant picture it and this book did a pretty good job it painting a picture and explaining what was happening.
I really liked the science aspect and the medical terminology, the author seemed to have done their research to make their story as accurate as could be when fictional meets real life science.

Thank you so much to booksgosocial via netgalley for sending me an ARC copy of The reality Thief by Paul Anlee.
All opinions are my own.

Must admit I found this one difficult to get into and only read the first few chapters. The chunks of exposition in italics were tedious, and the premise of injecting yourself with an unproven technology made me unable to take the main character seriously. Sorry.

I've been an avid SF reader since I was 12. I've read hundreds and hundreds of SF-books, went to numerous SF conventions and got to know some authors very well.
I was very much looking forward to reading this book because there seems to be a lack of hard SF nowadays.
Sadly, I was dissappointed on a number of points and I only got halfway in this book. Yes, it is very well written; the author has lots of imagination and knows how to attract the readers' interest. However, he did not succeed in keeping my interest.
First, the science part, which is ok. And of course the book is fiction so here we are. But there is more, much more and this makes, imho, for a rather unbalanced book.
I was halfway the book and so I read about a princess batteling with dragons. Not in her real body obvious and not in 'this time' or 'this universe' but somewhere else. I read about Chaos. I read about an entity that was able to 'create' worlds and so was seen as a 'God'. It is not clear in what day and age this is but apparently áfter the invention, sometime during 'our' time, a pregnant scientist made.
Suddenly, I'm confroted with a man who tells his son that no matter how smart he is and no matter how he gets help form the nanobots in his brain, this is only so because God wants this for him.
This book should have been labelled 'Christian' but it wasn't.
And to top it up, I had to read about politics, very complicated politics.

So I gave up. I will absolutely not compare the author to Isaac Asimov, one of my heroes - and for other reviewers: there are more SF authors than just Asimov ;-) - but in complexity the book looks a bit like The Reality Dysfunction by Peter Hamilton. The difference is that with Hamilton, everything comes nicely together and makes one big interesting story.

I hope this author will use his imagination and talent to write more SF books, but please, stick to one storyline - or maybe two - which I hope will make for a great book without all the confusing storylines in this book. And have it labelled correctly.

Thank you NetGalley for this book.