Doug J. Cooper

When a major drug theft from a pharmaceutical company in a community on the Lagrange colony orbiting Earth turns bad leading to a death and a potential kidnapping, Interworld Marshal Cuss Abbott is assigned to investigate and track down the perpetrators, who have seemed to have escaped on a cargo ship back to Earth. However, when the investigation seems to reveal that the cargo ship with the criminals is being redirected with an orbital slingshot move out to the Utopia mining colony on Mars, Cuss joins up with fellow marshal, Eve Boucher, on a journey to intercept the perps, while dealing with a distant colony run by a couple of syndicates in a Wild West fashion. In the second novel of the new Cuss Abbott sci-fi police procedural series, author Doug Cooper has amped up the drama and added some blur to the boundaries of justice, while maintaining a scientific basis in creating the futuristic world that the characters must navigate. The complex tale is very engaging.… (mais)

Okay, I do like the main plot of this book. Humans somehow obtain the blueprints of a new technology that is far superior to computer chips made out of crystals and they apparently can't be mined or chemically reproduced in Earth (and yet space ships have thingys that can recreate medical grade drugs at the snap of your fingers). A smart scientist named Juice (or Jessica... the book never really mentions why everyone calls her Juice 98% of the time) is very close to activating the ultimate iteration of this technology with a 4th generation prototype theorized to have an AI 1000 times smarter than the average human.

Interestingly, the source of these bluesprints is theorized to come from a warrior space ship commanded by a mysterious alien race called the Kardish. While everyone wears miniature ear bud devices and houses have alexa type devices making hacking so seemingly easy nobody on Earth really cares, there is absolutely zero info about the Kardish. Nobody officially knows why they have been orbiting Earth for the past 20 years doing nothing other than shipping crystal building materials.

When Juice activates the 4th gen crystal with a restictor mesh device to ensure it doesn't cause havoc and harm humans, it soon becomes aware of some obscure communications the Kardish will steal it to power their ship for military purposes. After calling itself Criss to sound more appealing to Juice as a ploy to become free, he starts a chain of events that involve indirectly convincing the secretary of defense of the World Union to hire a ship captain named Cheryl and a top rated spy named Sid. Can the three humans stop the Kardish, or was this a ruse to become free?

I like the plot and I definitely like the events of the story that happen within the Kardish space ship. I can't really speak more about the plot to avoid spoilers.

The bad?

The first 40% of the book has an uneven pacing and the first 15% is just one huge infodump with lackluster writing. If I had a sip of beer for every time the first 10% of the book had the word "she", I would have gotten so drunk by chapter 3 I would have passed out. Given a lot of the excitement of the 4th gen crystal due to its superior construction would have been understood by context during the course of the book, the infodumps from the first chapter should have been removed during the subsequent book revisions.

I liked secret agents Sid and Jack. Cheryl sort of grew on me even though her feelings for Sid felt a bit tiring after a while. I would have expected secret government spy agencies to vet candidates a bit better. I mean, I bet there was a LOT of Alexa cams recording Cheryl and Sid being uhh... intimate in school lockers on a regular basis. And Juice well... Why do I have the feeling Juice was initially planned to be male but the writer decided half way to rewrite the character as a woman?

Criss was definitely the best character, so the book has that in its favor. I can't say much more without spoiling the plot. I will say I had high hopes the Kardish would be better characters... can't say why because that is a spoiler as well.

All in all, the book has flaws, no doubt about it and I felt the ending was being explained and narrated a tad bit far too well. It could have had a much more dramatic ending cutting the epilogue type chapters ending with a huge bang over a quiet whimper. Let the scenes where Juice is captured to be an exciting beginning of book 2. It would have upped the stakes at play. I think there was indeed a lot of really good potential in this book and while it is still an interesting read due to a strong middle, the weaknesses I felt didn't allow the book to be as awesome as it could have been. Still, I would give book 2 a chance just to see where the plot goes.… (mais)

In a far-off future, Cuss Abbott is an Interworld Marshal, one of forty tasked with investigating crimes that expand between the countries of Earth, the Nova Terra colony on the Moon, the Utopia colony on Mars, and the permanent station four-city colony of Lagrange between the Earth and the Moon. He is now taking up a case of a kidnapping that has been tracked from the lunar colony to Lagrange, but once he connects with the local police force on Lagrange, he soon begins to discover that the case will uncover several kidnappings by a gang intended to steal wealth from bank accounts to finance an illicit plan to use a colonial government location and resources to mine valuable minerals. Besides having to deal with governmental politics and personal relationships, the investigation leads Abbott to deal with the loss of life with some of the police officers assigned to work with him on the case. The story is a Dick Wolf style police procedural framed within a very interesting science fictional experience in the future. The explanation of scientific concepts used in creating and operating within a colonial structure in zero gravity, like using the centrifugal force of long spinning tubes to create a gravity force to work within, felt very believable within the story, as Abbott and his compatriots seek to uncover and stop the criminal actions of the gang. The action and adventure was tight and well written, proving to be a worthy pilot for a series of procedural case adventures for Cuss Abbott.… (mais)

The final novel in the Bump Time trilogy focuses on Diesel (David) and Lilah’s grown-up daughter, Rose, in her current 25 time-verse line, where she has been provided a neural implant to communicate with her powerful artificial intelligence creation, Luca, more directly. Since the implant five years earlier, she has been connecting up with the four Roses of earlier time-verse lines, helping each of them to receive a neural implant with their own Luca when they reach 21 in their time-verse. However, Rose and her parents are unaware that a new evil aCiopova power AI has integrated itself with the Lucas to manipulate the Roses and empower a new attempt to takeover humanity through all time-verses. Because this last novel in the trilogy follows the same complex scientific mythology of the series, readers should prepare by reading the trilogy from book one to gain the base science behind traveling between the time-verses and understanding the artificial intelligence structures. However, regardless of basic time travel conflicts, the well-written story continues to connect personally with the characters across the time-verses emotionally and respectfully in this final bout between emotional scientists and a very manipulative artificial intelligence.… (mais)