A group of high school kids at a special school are told they are graduating early and have internships waiting for them with the company that funded their education. They are also informed that they are cloned from the DNA of famous people : Einstein, Leonardo Davinci, Martin Luther King, Catherine the Great and others. They are taken to a top secret facility on the gulf coast of Texas where the company has built a particle accelerator and an evolving ecosystem within an impenetrable wall. Inside the wall they can speed up time to accomplish multiples of 10 years in 3 minutes of real time. They have created a place even more fantastic and dangerous than the Jurassic Park or the Island of Dr, Moreau in fiction. The book is an exciting adventure filled with struggles, pitfalls and things that go horribly wrong. It is the first book in a planned series and I am looking forward to the next adventure!

wow, this book was truly amazing. the start was a bit slow, but once the action got started i flew through the pages. the concept was amazing, i loved the many plot twists and the way it made you so confused about which character you can trust and who not. i loved it. i recommend this!

Thank you to the publisher and to NetGalley for an ARC of The Twin Paradox! Unfortunately, this novel was a DNF for me. While an interesting and complex premise, I did not find myself drawn in enough to continue reading. The pacing was a little too slow for my taste, and I was having a hard time seeing where the story was heading or what it was going to culminate to—so much so, I preferred to stop reading then to find out. I also found the characters to be flat and two-dimensional, which made it difficult to get invested in the story as well. While I’m sure this novel may appeal to other fans of science fiction, it was personally not compelling enough for me.

A book that reads like an action movie! In fact, I know for sure that the movie will be even better than the book.

An underwater welder thinks he's having hallucinations deep in the ocean... Four high school graduates find out a surprise about their birth, and it leads them into a mysterious corporate headquarters that is not at all what it seems... and planes are falling out of the sky. What is going on?

There is peril at every turn, and everyone is in a race against time...

I really can't say more because you want to be surprised at what comes up in this adventure!

Charles Wachter weaves these stories into a fun, action-packed adventure with a sci-fi quality and lots of fun. I am actually excited about the prospect of this coming out as a movie as it would be even better than the book. I am going to give it 4 stars because while it is definitely absorbing, it feels like I'm reading something that is a movie, not a book, because it is so based on the action and not the characters themselves. But go ahead and read it ahead of the movie, because it would explain things better than they would be able to in the movie!

I received an ARC of this book as a reviewer for NetGalley.

Book Review: The Twin Paradox by Charles Wachter
(Published by Trevaney Bay, August 23, 2020)

eBook: ★★★★☆ (4.0 Stars)

// "...It's called the Twin Paradox.
If one twin left earth on a spaceship at the speed of light, time would pass slower for him, dilating to accommodate the speed, and then eventually, when he returned, his brother would be much older, or dead.
Here, this is backward. Time passes faster.
Ten years for three minutes..."
- from "The Twin Paradox" by Charles Wachter //

Paradox, noun. / pærəˌdɑks/
A person, thing, or situation that has two opposite features and therefore seems strange. - OED

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Day One. And done.

This fast-paced YA techno, sci-fi thriller set in southern Texas is entirely about a single day - the first day of orientation for a batch of new high school graduates, teenage honor students freshly recruited to do research and advance studies at Gene-E Corp, an independent research firm.

Unbeknownst to the teens until that very day, they are all duplicates of famous scientists and leaders, including two versions of Isaac Newton, an Albert Einstein, a Leonardo Da Vinci, inter-alia, in other words, the luminaries of mankind - cloned from DNA gathered from bones, chopped fingers, and relics by grave robbers and their ilk, paradoxically, mankind's dregs.

And in those first orientation hours, the young prodigies go on-the-job training full time through several adult lifetimes, unwittingly and unprepared, as they muster the full measure of their guts and brains to survive.

Time travel, in wormholes and vortexes, against a Michelangelo-led tribe of retro-stone age cannibals, and against a myriad of mutants and horrors created in a warped timespan of over a million years by Cornerstone, a top-secret particle accelerator project "...infinity more powerful than CERN..", a super-collider spread over an area of fifty square miles.

E=mc2. Cornerstone covers an ecosystem of over 5,000 square miles where energy, mass, light and time are manipulated, and the equivalent of 7,800 years pass in a single night with the sun rising and setting only once, - and the rest of America and the world none the wiser!

And then comes the revelation that the Russians and Chinese also have their own "Cornerstone", their own clones - Stalin, Hitler and a gallery of rogues.

With timelines and universes of both ecosystems intertwined in a spiral!

Breathtakingly creative!

Hard to exactly digest the storylines in this novel, but nonetheless, breathtaking!

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A debut novel penned by heavy-hitting TV executive producer, Charles Wachter ("Fear Factor", "American Gladiators"), it comes as no surprise that raves and accolades come in droves from the industry and adjuncts, and that a motion picture or television series seems to be already in the works.

It also comes as no surprise that the book at times reads like a television script outlined perhaps for an entire mini-series, with the cloned teen protagonists coming across as caricatured test tube babies, sorely lacking in character development, without emotional connections, background, parentage or upbringing.

As a techno sci-fi thriller, the book is definitely at par, or even superior compared with the best of the genre(s). But persons, events, twists and turns come and end hurriedly, jumbled with loose ends unresolved, conjured as though on a tight schedule and on a whim.

Overall, this novel may neither be entirely unputdownable nor meet all the usual prerogatives for a good book, yet, paradoxically, so to speak, it is one helluva read!

Review based on an ARC from Trevaney Bay and NetGalley.

Gripping, science fiction infused thriller that will hold your attention from start to finish. Multidimensional world building with an innovative plot. This book is hard to put down.

My thanks to NetGalley and to Trevaney Bay for an advanced copy of this new thiller.

Charles Wachter aims for the stands in this science fiction thriller The Twin Paradox. Hard science, womholes, conspiracy theory, planes falling from the skies, clones, enigmatic female spies, more clones, Cold War shenanigans, cannibals, nature supercharged. There is a lot going on, sort of like a Michael Crichton greatest hits collection, but remixed for the 21 century. I mean this in a good way, though the action does especially near the end of the novel get in the way of the story, which is really kind of interesting.

Mr. Wachter must be on the Internet and dark net or reading tons of scientific papers 24/7. There is so much science fact and fiction, historical snippets, survival tips, and stories, even some Pokémon lore and card history. I don't want to give any plot away, because that is unfair, and is covered in the novel description. There is a lot going on. The novel is very readable, the characters are interesting, though some seem a little deus ex machina in that they seem only to exist to help the main character survive situations or explaining things the characters need to know, disappearing offpage until needed. The story doesn't drop facts, but explains things well, leaving enough for a few sequels later on. I can easily see this as a Netflix series.

A rollicking summer read, the kind of summer thriller the publishers don't make enough of anymore. Feels smart, but the action keeps you going the characters will seem familiar, and yet new. A fun reading expierence.

This has been out a while and has hundred of ratings and reviews. Since I can't add anything more that is helpful, I'll just recommend it to scifi thriller fans.

Thanks very much for the review copy!!!

I received an ARC copy for this review and was so looking forward to this book. I really wanted to love the book, but I could not. The writing is good and the story is fast paced with a lot of turns. In fact all the turns and twist just became too much. The story starts well with cloning some of history's greatest minds. But the clones are in their teens and at times not believable. The kid clones would have been better in their 20s or 30s and stronger more believable characterizes. One of the clones is defined in the very beginning of the book as not really being the DNA of a famous person, but that story line never develops, so why bring it up in the book. This is a pattern that just make the book hard to follow.

Without giving the story away, you have cloning, time bending, wormholes, bad Russians, evil corporate Americans, love story (maybe), monsters, cannibals', more cloning, torture, strange science, motorcycles, battles, body building, and wait for it... Hitler. Just traveling down one or two story lines would have worked better, then trying to be have everything.

This was a surprising read! The beginning started a bit slow, and there were a few times where I wondered where the story was going and I questioned whether I wanted to continue reading as it took a while to grab me. However, I did continue and I am glad that I did! Things ramped up quickly to the point where I could NOT put the book down as I had to know what would happen next and how the characters would continue their own paths. The story reminded me quite a bit of a number of thriller/sci-fi films that have been released in the past few years, but in a good way! It seemed that the similar content allowed me to better visualize the story and what was happening and it certainly played out like a movie. I really enjoyed this book and knowing now that it does take a bit to get going, I will be sure to reread with a more acute attention to detail in the beginning chapters.

This book presents a fascinating concept, but I found it overly complicated and difficult to follow. As a non-scientist and someone who doesn’t typically read science fiction, this may be partly my fault. However, I did not experienced these issues with Andy Weir’s books, which manage to make scientific details easier to understand. This book just wasn’t for me. Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for providing this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

I was intrigued at first, but as the book went on, the author lost his grip on the world he had created. Good science fiction writers create a world and the characters and events make sense in that world. Weak science fiction writers throw in all sorts of events that are not consistent with the "rules" set out at the beginning. By the last few chapters, I was skimming just to see whether the characters were saved, but it was a stew of every crazy plot device came to the author's brain. I do not recommend this book.

"With ten years passing for every three minutes on a remote stretch of Texas coast, planes fall out of the sky, evolved species are on the hunt, and people die inside one of the most vicious ecosystems ever grown—all a result of the government’s efforts to slow down time.

A lot can happen in ten years. That’s the point. Governments are always racing for supremacy, for scientific breakthroughs, for technological advantages—and these things take time.

Until something goes wrong."

Charles Wachter's The Twin Paradox mixes together the manipulation of time with clones, government conspiracies, forces of nature and even the frustrations of adolescence.

The story is action packed and complex. Some of the science is farfetched, but entertaining. If you enjoy fast-paced, mind-bending adventures, this story is for you!

Paul Summers, a government broker is tasked with finding out if Cornerstone's Gene-E Corp should continue to be funded.
Jimmy Jones, an underwater welder on an oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico is the only survivor of the collapse of the rig.
Tergen Ralls is the brainchild and CEO of Gene-E Corp.
High School students at a elite school, graduate early and start an internship at Gene-E, with only five of them, Alastair, Leo, Zach, Martha (Milk) and Katherine, to work at the "Crypt"
As all these people converge at Gene-E's Crypt project, it seems that something is going horribly wrong and that it needs to be fixed quickly.
A fascinating read with a "Jurassic Park " type adventure in time manipulation but it also delves into history, biology, physics and espionage.
Thank you Charles Wachter and NetGalley for this e-galley of"The Twin Paradox".

At the beginning, this book had me absolutely hooked. The concept is amazing, but the execution as the story progressed was just … disappointing. It just went too far and became a bit ridiculous to me. I started wondering just how bad it was going to get. Super let down as the beginning was just so amazing, and the rest of the story just didn’t hold up.

The plot of the story is intriguing, clone historical geniuses and see what happens. What happened, as the title suggests, is a quantum physics paradox. The build up of the characters and staging of the story was slow, several times I almost gave up. I stuck with it because I received the book through NetGalley for me to give an honest review of the book, and felt I owed it to NetGalley and the author. As the first in a series, I understand that the characters needed to be developed, the science had to be explained and it definitely ended better than it started, but you have to get through 3/4 of the book to get to the good part. I am not a science fiction reader, so this is not entirely up my alley, and as such I am not sure I will read the next book in the series or not at this point.

The Twin Paradox by Charles Wachter is such a fun read. I liken it to a mashup of Michael Crichton, James Rollins, and Stephen King. Every chapter was more wild than the last. Time travel, mad scientists, giant chickens (yes, I said giant chickens), it has it all!

I recommend the novel to readers of science fiction, techno thrillers, and adventure novels.

I am a library paraprofessional and received an advance copy from #NetGalley. Opinions are my own.

This is a story about creation.. and the fallacy of control.

This book was WILD. As an avid scifi reader I don’t encounter a lot that throws me, but this genuinely took me for a ride. Did I understand 100% of the concepts? A definite maybe! Did I enjoy them anyway? Yes! It’s also worth noting that this book contained the most terrifying sequence of events I’ve ever read about in my life- involving a very specific fear of mine. Legit the stuff of nightmares, so naturally I think everyone should read it.

I recently saw that it is being adapted and I’m excited to see it!

Thank you so much Netgalley , Charles Wachter & Trevaney Bay for the eArc!

*I received a free copy from Netgalley for my honest review.

This was an intriguing book. From the very beginning I was captivated by the idea of the collection of DNA to be used to create clones of past geniuses. The adventure of the book was also a fun ride. I really enjoyed getting to know the teenagers, learning about the scientific projects of the government, and the way that they all tied in to one another. The only thing that I did not like was the way it felt a bit disconnected from itself. It felt like there were three stories that sort of wove together but kind of didn't. There were a lot of questions that I had in regards to things that happened, and some background stories I would have liked to have been explained a bit better.

The first story was the story of the DNA collection and the orphan girl Kat. That was interesting on its own, but was left hanging. Perhaps this will be picked up in future stories.

The second story was the story of Jimmy and his father, Cayce. They were the center of one arch for awhile, and I was interested to learn more about them. But then they kind of get thrown into the main story of the kids with the scientists.

The third story had to do with the scientists and the kids who were created as clones. This was the majority of the story. There was a brief period of time in which a group of criminals who were trying to recreate what the Americans had created met and discussed plans. But it didn't feel all that connected. It ended up leading to "bad guys" who show up in the science projects of the main criminals. Ultimately all the characters are woven together into a science experiment gone wrong. But no return to the prelude's characters.

The only other thing that I was not fond of was the lack of explanation for the Bone People. The scientists don't know about them, yet they are very serious threat and are fairly prominent in a huge portion of the story. A sequel could answer a lot of my questions as the story could unfold more, but I am not sure if it would unless it will be in flashbacks instead of simply continuing the story. I do know that Wachter has published a second book, but I am not sure if I want to invest more time in it. It just depends on what aspect of the story it covers, and if it ends up answering questions instead of giving me more.

Ultimately I do think that it is a book worth the time to read. I found it to be a fun adventure. I just wish that there were some changes in the way in which it was executed.

I want this to be a movie. I devoured this book very quickly.

The book starts with alternating timelines, which seems to be how most of the books I'm reading now are written. I'm not the biggest fan of it, but I was necessary in some respects. The one point of view that pulled away and I didn't find important was the one where the government was featured. It wasn't much, so it didn't pull from the storyline, but it was something I skimmed over.

I enjoyed the character development, but felt that several of the characters fell short. If all of them were well rounded though, it would have been a much longer book.

I don't like when book descriptions and reviews liken the book to other books and movies; however, I did get a Jurassic Park vibe a couple of times.

I received a free copy of this book from Netgalley in exchange for a free and unbiased review.