Review: PLANESRUNNER

Planesrunner by Ian McDonald
Book 1 of the Everness series
Read by Tom Lawrence
Genre: science fiction | YA
Format: ebook & audiobook

About Planesrunner:

There is not one you. There are many yous. There is not one world. There are many worlds. Ours is one among billions of parallel earths.

When Everett Singh’s scientist father is kidnapped from the streets of London, he leaves young Everett a mysterious app on his computer. Suddenly, this teenager has become the owner of the most valuable object in the multiverse—the Infundibulum—the map of all the parallel earths, and there are dark forces in the Ten Known Worlds who will stop at nothing to get it. They’ve got power, authority, the might of ten planets—some of them more technologically advanced than our Earth—at their fingertips. He’s got wits, intelligence, and a knack for Indian cooking.

To keep the Infundibulum safe, Everett must trick his way through the Heisenberg Gate that his dad helped build and go on the run in a parallel Earth. But to rescue his dad from Charlotte Villiers and the sinister Order, this Planesrunner’s going to need friends. Friends like Captain Anastasia Sixsmyth, her adopted daughter, Sen, and the crew of the airship Everness.

Can they rescue Everett’s father and get the Infundibulum to safety? The game is afoot!

Source: Info in the About Planesrunner was taken from GoodReads at https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/11291920-planesrunner on 16/02/2014.

Buy Links:

My Thoughts:

It took me a long time to get into this book, even with the convenience of the audiobook and ebook formats. However once I crossed the halfway mark it did pick up. Tom Lawrence is so obviously British (other than his accent, of course) that he pronounces "Mall" as "mal" as opposed to "mawl". Little things like that makes me smile. That, on top of his good reading, good diction and clear words, made him an excellent narrator for this book. I believe that any other accent other than British wouldn't suit this book at all!

The audiobook cover art has a dirigible as center piece and I like it! It is not only apropos to the story but pleasing to my fantasy geek's eyes. Something that would ping my book-buying radar. The old versions of the cover of this book though are quite ugly. I am so glad I did not see them before I started reading/listening to this book or I would never ever start reading it to begin with. It was that awesomely unappealing.

The plot wasn't too bad. But it was kind of quite straight forward. So that kind of didn't help the rating of this book. My guess is, the author is more concerned about laying out the fundamentals of this book rather than the plot. Setting up the stage, so to speak. This is book one in a series, after all.

The premise of the world building sounds good. But for some reason I could not wrap my head around millions and millions versions of Earth. The scientific explanation seems logically convincing. But somehow I am not convinced. Why is that? I reckon it is tied to the way the story is told. The story telling quality is not bad. In fact, I kinda like it. But, it is just not doing a good job of convincing my subconscious to suspend disbelief about parallel worlds in this case. I also reckon that maybe I need to read further into this series to fully appreciate the world building. Some series has that effect on me sometimes. The further down the line I read, the more it grows on me. Like wine, it tastes better as it matures.

I have issues with some little things in the book but in the bigger scheme of things, are tolerable. And despite the slow start, I did enjoy this book and am looking forward to listening to Be My Enemy.

Empirical Evaluation:
Story telling quality = 3.5
Character development = 4.5
Story itself = 4
Writing Style = 4
Ending = 4
World building = 4
Cover art = 5
Pace = 3
Plot = 3
Narration = 5

Overall Rating: 4 out of 5 cherries


Books In The Everness Series:

Thank you to Audible Ltd. for the audiobook review copy received. And thank you too, to Mary Chen of Buried Under Romance who hosted a contest which made it possible for me to win an ebook copy of Planesrunner by Ian McDonald!

FTC Disclosure:
The audiobook copy of this book was received for free from Audible UK. The ebook copy was received for free from Mary Chen as a prize for a blog contest won. No money received for this review.