Quantum Leap: Mirror's Edge

I got this book for Christmas, and finished reading it today. (I'm a slow reader)

Although this book is billed as "The Conclusion", it is in fact set immeadiately prior to the events of Mirror Image - the final episode (at time of writing) of the TV series.

As with so many Quantum Leap books, the story puts its own unique spin on the set-up of the weekly TV series, concentrates far more on events in the present day, and features a plot that uses time to threaten the project's very creation. I'm not knocking the novel range for repeatedly featuring these elements, quite the reverse. These are precisely the sort of story-ideas that we should have got on television.

No, the recurring disppointment of the books is that they have these wonderful ideas, which they never really get moving.

From the very first TV series, I was waiting for Sam to encounter an enemy who knew all about him, but this really never happened. In this book, quite brilliantly, it does. I'd tell you how, gush about it's ramifications and enthuse about all the crazy logical possibilities that arise from this, but, and here's the thing, said villain, while he knows everything, does pretty well nothing.

I'm always disappointed to pick up a book with a great premise, only to find myself repeatedly counting the ever dwindling number of pages left in which the story has to really start. Foreknowledge suffered the same fate.

Sadly, Mirror's Edge is no exception. Joe Powell could have been a great villain - he certainly has both the intelligence and the power. But this book's strengths lie with Sam's family.

His resurrected brother Tom, unaware of Sam's time-travelling, has been living an alternate life that Sam has no memory of. Tom has, quite reasonably, believed Sam to be dead. The question of whether to finally tell him the truth, and bring him in on the years-long conspiracy against his family, is a fine piece of drama, although it's solution is fairly matter-of-fact.

Carol Davis and Esther D Reese can write all right. The book has a small cast, which gives each character a great deal of room to develop. Sadly, as I said, it really is at the expense of an actual story. Something that has a middle and an ending, as well as a start. 7 out of 10.


Gooshie and Al attend discuss Ziggy's own unique millennium bug in Mirror's Edge.

More Quantum Leap: http://projectquantumleap.com