Chemical Cocktail

I made a bit of a mistake here, I really enjoyed Erskine’s last book so much I jumped at the chance of reading this one…turns out it is book 3 in a series. It’s my mistake but all the pressure is on Erskine, will this book work as a standalone novel or will those readers new to numbers be complaining during their whole review? Luckily Erskine is a mighty fine writer, and this book works well without having read the previous ones, you get a little background that doesn’t get explained and that is enough to entice you into checking out what came before whilst not taking anything away from this reading experience. The character descriptions are spot on so that I can see they won’t get repetitive as you work your way through the series…so in conclusion for this opening paragraph, this book works.

Our main character is Jaq Silver (an autobiographic representation of Erskine herself methinks, kick-ass and a scientist), a rather unusual character, she is tough, knows how to fight, has an uncanny ability to spot trouble and she knows her stuff when it comes to sciency things, but she also shares her weaknesses, she can be selfish by using others to get what she needs and even though she has all these great positives she is lacking in confidence at times, which had me cheering her on as she battled with her confidence. Her mother has just died and in part of her inheritance she receives some proper good “soap-opera” news, as things were building up to the big reveal I had all kinds of ideas but was still way off the mark.

There is plenty of science going on in here and Erskine has this ability to take something complicated, make it easy enough for the layman to understand whilst still making it look complicated enough that you feel clever for understanding it….if that makes sense. There are lots of cool gadgets whose functions are explained in detail and if you are left disbelieving then at the end of the book Erskine shares how close these gadgets are to being a reality, I can’t wait to travel to work just using my belt.

The story is made up of quite short chapters and this makes the action more intense, whilst the story flows along at a fast trot. The plot is tight, everything gets explained well, and it was very easy to get drawn into the story, with the intrigue over the inheritance to have me committed early on. One of my favourite things about this book was the food, a lot of writers will say that a character is eating and that’s it, Erskine must have a real passion for food because the images were so vivid I actually drooled onto the page when Jaq was at one restaurant.

Another fine book from Erskine that leaves the reader wanting more, luckily for me there is more as I will now have to go get books 1 and 2. Highly recommended read for those who like a good thriller.

PS: Check out page 58