My rating: 3 of 5 stars
I came across Regarding Ducks and Universes while skimming book titles on my Kindle. It was $1.99 and involved multiple universes, which is right there at top of my guilty pleasure plots list (along with time travel). I indulged.
Felix Sayers is a culinary writer living in the San Francisco of Universe A. His dream is to one day write a mystery novel. He gets side tracked when he realized that there is, in fact, another Felix Sayers in the other universe, Universe B. Who is this other Felix Sayers? What is his life like, and most importantly, has he already written the mystery novel that our main character has been dreaming about? Felix travels to the other universe to find out for himself, but finds that people in Universe B are looking for him too and believe that he actually played a roll in the link between the two Universes.
This is not a perfect book, but it's pretty good. Chances are, not many people you know will have read it, which gives you something interesting to talk about. It's not a long, time consuming read nor is it a "brain break" book. It's different. And it feels like it only has a touch of science fiction to it, even though it involves multiple universes.
The strength of this book is the setting and the plot. They're both crazy! There are two universes that are almost similar, but different. They both have a San Francisco, but only one universe still has a Golden Gate Bridge. The other universe had to replace their bridge after an earthquake. Only one universe can make sourdough bread, the ingredients to make it don't exist in the other. It's enough to read the whole book just to see the differences.
However, the main character is an Eeyore. By that, I mean he hardly acts and he doesn't really react, just like Eeyore in the Winnie the Pooh stories. It makes his character unbelievable. Many of the supporting characters have lots of individuality and nuances, which somewhat makes up for the lack of it in the main character. It feels like the author relates better to Bean, the woman Felix meets when he crosses into Universe B and a character that plays a major role in the book.
Reviews listed the lack of explanation as a weakness for Regarding Ducks and Universes. I think the author tries to explain the link between universes throughout the book by having supporting characters provide helpful analogies to Felix. At a certain point, I started skimming these analogies. Although I don't want a full on explanation of this universe stuff, I would prefer a little more clarification at the beginning and less analogies throughout. Really, the analogies could be replaced with character development for the main character, Felix.
1 comments:
This reminds me of Fringe.
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