This book combines physics with medical science in a science-fiction thriller with a more believable premise than most. Caro Somes-Watkins' career takes a deep dive when she accuses another colleague of sexual harrassment; when the charges are dropped for lack of supporting testimony from co-workers, internet trolls jump on her case and make it a mission to disrupt her life as much as possible. She also supports her sister in taking care of a special needs child, so she wants to jump on the opportunity from a distant relative to perform research surgery, yet she has doubts.

Her great-uncle's facility is studying consciousness, reality, alterate universes, and more as a way of having life after death - all which seem so far-fetched to her, but her uncle's severly declining health makes their need for her skills even more necessary. It's an interesting book with a LOT of science - lots of quantum entanglement and more more science than can be explained in a review. It's all very intellectually interesting and raises the degree of difficultly in breezing through the book. Ultimately it ends up going the way you'd think it does, but it doesn't answer what happens in the reality your consciousness enters when that version of you ages - will there be a similar way to jump reality there too?

Interesting read for a science thriller!

This is a "hard" science fiction novel, focusing more on the big science idea than on characters or character development. It's still pretty good, but I'd recommend it to people who are more interested in physics and the biological sciences. Honestly, the attempts to install plot here felt like a distraction from the narrative's true goals.

Observer by Nancy Kress and Robert Lanza

Very interesting book, but I would have preferred a new solo Nancy Kress novel.

I first (re)discovered Nancy Kress a few years ago when I was in an reading dry spell. I was listlessly perusing the library shelves feeling like I had nothing to read when I came across a copy of her then-just published novella After the Fall, Before the Fall, During the Fall. I recognized her name from having read Beggars in Spain years before so I picked it up.

It blew me away. The book was a masterpiece. The author created a fully realized world, She didn’t need a thousand pages to do it. Up until that point I had been disdainful of shorter works; Nancy Kress made me realize just how much hard work and talent was needed to excecise economy when world building.

However, this book isn’t just by Nancy Kress Here she has coauthor Robert Lanza, a scientist who seemingly wanted to get his ideas into the form of a novel.

There is alot of awkwardness in the book. I almost stopped reading halfway through the prologue- it was boring and dull and every character’s name started with a W and I couldn’t tell them apart and I didn’t care about any of them.

Am I glad I pushed through that! Even though some parts of the book read like a dry, poorly written physics textbook (during which I kept muttering to myself that Lanza should’ve let Kress write this alone) those dull clunky sections were massively overpowered by the well drawn characters and the very real emotions that jumped off the page down my throat and lodged in my sternum.

I wish the book had had content warnings for child disability and child death.

I understand from some cursory internetting that Lanza may believe in the observer-created reality that the characters believe in in the novel. I can’t say that I’m convinced myself. It sounds a lot like wish fulfillment to me. But it sure has given me a lot to think about . . .