Wednesday 18 November 2015

Review on The Quantum Door





After discovering that someone has moved into the abandoned house close to their own, brothers Brady and Felix decide to investigate their new neighbours. After their drone unexpectedly crashes, strange things start to happen. The power keeps going out unexpectedly, and there seems to be strange mechanical animals living in the forest. When they meet Nova, their lives are turned upside down. There is a door that lets them travel between parallel worlds, but Brady and Felix soon find out that some worlds are better off left unexplored.



I adore YA Sci-Fi so this book immediately caught my attention. Brady and his younger brother Felix follow their new friend Nova through the quantum door, where they enter a parallel world in which humans have become extinct and artificial intelligence has taken over. I loved the idea of sentient robots, and especially loved that some of the robots seemed to have maternal feelings, leading them to create child robots.

I loved the relationship between the two brothers and how they constantly risked their lives for each other. I especially loved Felix, who saw that even artificial life was precious and risked his life on multiple occasions for Nova’s robotic friends. Nova was an interesting character and I loved that we learnt more about her and her world as the book progressed. I loved the relationship between Nova and Achilles, her robotic dog, and loved that Achilles seemed to genuinely care about her and want to protect her. I particularly enjoyed seeing Achilles’ memories and the reason why he had been created.

I was slightly confused about when the novel was set, as the technology in Brady and Felix’s world seemed to be quite advanced with self driving cars and virtual reality glasses, yet they were surprised when they discovered the mechanical animals. I found this slightly strange as it would seem likely that with their advanced technology robots would be a normal occurrence for them.

The different types of robots were interesting, with some of them being aggressive and others being a little more welcoming, which showed that they were not too dissimilar to humans. I liked that the different types of robots had different names as if each different type was it’s own race.

The first half of the book was a little slow, as it mostly consisted of Brady and Felix trying to find out why their new neighbour was so private and trying to spy on them. However things started to pick up once they had entered the parallell world and had to go on rescue missions to save each other from the various types of robots. The story about how Nova came to be living in a world where all other forms of human life had been wiped out was interesting. I also loved how the Artifex were trying to mimic human life through reading books and watching movies, yet had got everything about the human world slightly wrong. I’ve always thought the idea of parallel worlds interesting and that there could be another you living a similar life but with certain things changed. I loved that this book explored that, and I empathised with Felix’s reaction to having to leave a world that had something in it that he wanted so badly.

I always love when a plot seems to be resolved but you realise you still have a few pages to go and that something is about to go down. This is exactly what happened in this novel, and I loved how for a split second Brady and Felix thought everything was back to normal until they were thrown into another problem which only escalated. I thought the ending wrapped up most things nicely, while still living a few things open for the reader to think about, such as what happened to Nova and if the boys ever saw her again.

If you love YA Sci-Fi and futuristic novels that you should read this book!



The Quantum Door is now available to purchase!

 












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