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Snap
429 pages, Paperback
First published February 1, 2011
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
August 8, 2016
~~From Red Adept Reviews~~
I received Snap, by Mario Molinari, as a review copy submitted to "Red Adept Reviews" by the author.
Overall: 3 1/4 Stars
Plot/Storyline: 4 1/4 Stars
The plot kept me eager for more, as time travel novels are wont to do. The time travel theorem was fun and had complex consequences, so it was only natural that the tension built as the plot advanced. Three major action points, at beginning, middle and end, really accentuated the pacing, but in between, the plot by no means slowed down. Something was happening with someone all the time.
There were a few scenes that felt extraneous--characterization had been fully established by then--but for the most part, the action flowed smoothly through several points of view.
I got confused at one point, when Warren is escaping from Robert Paxton and tells multiple people to send Paxton the bill for damages he caused. It seems that if anyone had taken Warren up on that, it would have led Paxton directly to where Warren was or had recently been.
A couple of plot points felt weak, such as Warren's obliviousness to his college roommate's diabolical streak, and the reason for needing a finger snap when conducting time travel. But the pacing is fast and the action is high, so it's easy to just get swept along with the fun.
Character Development: 4 Stars
Warren was mostly believable, but a few of his reactions and accomplishments came across as belonging to a harder man than a time travel scientist/Canadian Conservation Officer.
The love triangle that Julie and Sara set up with Warren went from believable to laughably entertaining by the end of the book. The women had great personalities, and I liked them both, but it strained their very fabric to keep up with the triangle scenes.
There were a couple of places where character reactions weren't given enough oomph to carry the scene. In one time stream, two people learn of the torture and death of someone that one of them loved and the other had never met, yet both react equally, and their reactions are glossed over in favor of the action sequence that's occurring.
The villain, Robert Paxton, seemed to be full of black, lacking any gray. He scowled and smirked, he shouted and sent goons and enjoyed heinous killing when a simple bullet to the head would have sufficed.
My favorite scene involved Brad, the movie star's lousy husband. He was a flawed character, but he wasn't irredeemable, and I enjoyed all the scenes he was in.
Kurten was another excellent villain; a vicious hunting hound. In the first time stream, it's revealed that he's only a bad guy because of a random series of events that Warren caused, which resulted in an injury that made Kurten unpredictable and dangerous. In subsequent time streams, I waited to learn of his "healing", due to the DNA feature of the time travel theorem, but it never came, though at one point Warren is healed by going back in time.
Writing Style: 3 Stars
The novel has a consistent habit of telling. A couple of the technical scenes felt overstuffed with details. I also noticed some editorializing parts, where the author seems to speak directly to the reader, denoted by switching from past tense to present tense and commenting on something unknowable or unrelated to the characters.
Some authors get the urge to explain the fate of minor characters after they leave the plot. While it could be seen as some sort of curiosity on the main character's part, where he goes and looks up the fate of these passing acquaintances, the subsequent changing of the time stream made all of those fates not only irrelevant, but impossible to go back and discover.
I'm mostly sure that the author's writing style is third person omnipotent. But there's a chance that 95% of the scene change asterisks somehow got deleted (I think I counted three of them in the whole novel). I had a terrible time tracking the action when, without gap or mention, the scene shifted location and POV character from one paragraph to another.
The writing is loose. I noticed some instances of adding explanations after the fact, when a simple rearranging of sentence order would have made everything smooth.
Editing: 2 Stars
Commas were regularly stolen from their rightful places and used to replace periods, both in and out of dialogue. At one point, this resulted in the dubious occasion of Timber the dog barking some dialogue. Spaces between the end of sentences and their final punctuation were oddly common. Some verbs used the wrong tense (let's keeping looking). A couple of times, the same speaker had their lines incorrectly spread over two adjacent paragraphs, as if two separate people were speaking. The odd capitalization of a common word or misspelling of a famous name just added to the feeling that this book really needs a proofreader.
I received Snap, by Mario Molinari, as a review copy submitted to "Red Adept Reviews" by the author.
Overall: 3 1/4 Stars
Plot/Storyline: 4 1/4 Stars
The plot kept me eager for more, as time travel novels are wont to do. The time travel theorem was fun and had complex consequences, so it was only natural that the tension built as the plot advanced. Three major action points, at beginning, middle and end, really accentuated the pacing, but in between, the plot by no means slowed down. Something was happening with someone all the time.
There were a few scenes that felt extraneous--characterization had been fully established by then--but for the most part, the action flowed smoothly through several points of view.
I got confused at one point, when Warren is escaping from Robert Paxton and tells multiple people to send Paxton the bill for damages he caused. It seems that if anyone had taken Warren up on that, it would have led Paxton directly to where Warren was or had recently been.
A couple of plot points felt weak, such as Warren's obliviousness to his college roommate's diabolical streak, and the reason for needing a finger snap when conducting time travel. But the pacing is fast and the action is high, so it's easy to just get swept along with the fun.
Character Development: 4 Stars
Warren was mostly believable, but a few of his reactions and accomplishments came across as belonging to a harder man than a time travel scientist/Canadian Conservation Officer.
The love triangle that Julie and Sara set up with Warren went from believable to laughably entertaining by the end of the book. The women had great personalities, and I liked them both, but it strained their very fabric to keep up with the triangle scenes.
There were a couple of places where character reactions weren't given enough oomph to carry the scene. In one time stream, two people learn of the torture and death of someone that one of them loved and the other had never met, yet both react equally, and their reactions are glossed over in favor of the action sequence that's occurring.
The villain, Robert Paxton, seemed to be full of black, lacking any gray. He scowled and smirked, he shouted and sent goons and enjoyed heinous killing when a simple bullet to the head would have sufficed.
My favorite scene involved Brad, the movie star's lousy husband. He was a flawed character, but he wasn't irredeemable, and I enjoyed all the scenes he was in.
Kurten was another excellent villain; a vicious hunting hound. In the first time stream, it's revealed that he's only a bad guy because of a random series of events that Warren caused, which resulted in an injury that made Kurten unpredictable and dangerous. In subsequent time streams, I waited to learn of his "healing", due to the DNA feature of the time travel theorem, but it never came, though at one point Warren is healed by going back in time.
Writing Style: 3 Stars
The novel has a consistent habit of telling. A couple of the technical scenes felt overstuffed with details. I also noticed some editorializing parts, where the author seems to speak directly to the reader, denoted by switching from past tense to present tense and commenting on something unknowable or unrelated to the characters.
Some authors get the urge to explain the fate of minor characters after they leave the plot. While it could be seen as some sort of curiosity on the main character's part, where he goes and looks up the fate of these passing acquaintances, the subsequent changing of the time stream made all of those fates not only irrelevant, but impossible to go back and discover.
I'm mostly sure that the author's writing style is third person omnipotent. But there's a chance that 95% of the scene change asterisks somehow got deleted (I think I counted three of them in the whole novel). I had a terrible time tracking the action when, without gap or mention, the scene shifted location and POV character from one paragraph to another.
The writing is loose. I noticed some instances of adding explanations after the fact, when a simple rearranging of sentence order would have made everything smooth.
Editing: 2 Stars
Commas were regularly stolen from their rightful places and used to replace periods, both in and out of dialogue. At one point, this resulted in the dubious occasion of Timber the dog barking some dialogue. Spaces between the end of sentences and their final punctuation were oddly common. Some verbs used the wrong tense (let's keeping looking). A couple of times, the same speaker had their lines incorrectly spread over two adjacent paragraphs, as if two separate people were speaking. The odd capitalization of a common word or misspelling of a famous name just added to the feeling that this book really needs a proofreader.
October 14, 2014
Snap by Mario Molinari is a very good book. It starts out a little slow but picks up as you read. It is a book dealing with time travel.
Warren Hardy is a physicist working for Theorix and Robert Paxton. He and Robert had been roommates in college and now Warren worked for Robert. Robert wants something Warren is working on and Warren doesn’t want to give it to him so Robert fires him. Warren leaves rapidly only to find a dead body in his car and a bloody knife too. Warren also has Project Magellan with him, it is the project dealing with time travel. Now it is time for Warren to disappear.
Sarah King is an actress on location for her film. Her husband is off traveling for his job but calls her. Cindy is her sister and is on location with her. The film has an explosion in it and they set off the explosion and set off an avalanche. The avalanche rolls over the entire film crew and they disappear.
Wade Hunt is a junior high physics teacher who is working as a conservation officer as well. As he is checking out the area with his dog, Timber, he sees and hears the avalanche. Knowing time is of the essence, he heads to the area to see if he can rescue anyone. He manages to rescue Sara; her sister Cindy; John Hollinger an actor; Sam, the special effects manager; two other men and another woman. Because he can’t take all of them with him to the resort where they can take a helicopter to the hospital, he takes only Sara and Cindy who need medical attention the most, and ends up taking John and Sam as well. They stop at his cabin to regroup and take care of Cindy for a short time. While there, John and Sam take off on his snowmobile and take his radio too. This leaves Wade, Sara, and Cindy stranded.
What Sara does not know is that Wade is really Warren Hardy and he has a jump drive with Project Magellan on it. Wade decides to try to get into Theorix and go back in time so he can stop the avalanche and keep Cindy from dying. He knows this may interfere with his growing attraction to Sara and hers for him. Meanwhile, Julie, his girlfriend and Brad, Sara’s husband are frantically waiting for news of them. Little does Brad know that Cindy has told Sara of their affair thus ending their marriage. Julie doesn’t know yet that she is pregnant.
What will happen as Wade tries to get into Theorix and fix the time machine? Who is Anna Drakaz who keeps showing up? Will the men hired by Paxton find them before they can fix the machine? What happens between Wade and Sara, Wade and Julie, and Wade and Anna? Does Wade fix the time machine?
Warren Hardy is a physicist working for Theorix and Robert Paxton. He and Robert had been roommates in college and now Warren worked for Robert. Robert wants something Warren is working on and Warren doesn’t want to give it to him so Robert fires him. Warren leaves rapidly only to find a dead body in his car and a bloody knife too. Warren also has Project Magellan with him, it is the project dealing with time travel. Now it is time for Warren to disappear.
Sarah King is an actress on location for her film. Her husband is off traveling for his job but calls her. Cindy is her sister and is on location with her. The film has an explosion in it and they set off the explosion and set off an avalanche. The avalanche rolls over the entire film crew and they disappear.
Wade Hunt is a junior high physics teacher who is working as a conservation officer as well. As he is checking out the area with his dog, Timber, he sees and hears the avalanche. Knowing time is of the essence, he heads to the area to see if he can rescue anyone. He manages to rescue Sara; her sister Cindy; John Hollinger an actor; Sam, the special effects manager; two other men and another woman. Because he can’t take all of them with him to the resort where they can take a helicopter to the hospital, he takes only Sara and Cindy who need medical attention the most, and ends up taking John and Sam as well. They stop at his cabin to regroup and take care of Cindy for a short time. While there, John and Sam take off on his snowmobile and take his radio too. This leaves Wade, Sara, and Cindy stranded.
What Sara does not know is that Wade is really Warren Hardy and he has a jump drive with Project Magellan on it. Wade decides to try to get into Theorix and go back in time so he can stop the avalanche and keep Cindy from dying. He knows this may interfere with his growing attraction to Sara and hers for him. Meanwhile, Julie, his girlfriend and Brad, Sara’s husband are frantically waiting for news of them. Little does Brad know that Cindy has told Sara of their affair thus ending their marriage. Julie doesn’t know yet that she is pregnant.
What will happen as Wade tries to get into Theorix and fix the time machine? Who is Anna Drakaz who keeps showing up? Will the men hired by Paxton find them before they can fix the machine? What happens between Wade and Sara, Wade and Julie, and Wade and Anna? Does Wade fix the time machine?
October 22, 2012
Snap by Mario Molinari is a combination of time travel and thriller well rolled into one fast paced story. The main character finds himself in an ethical dilemma and in trying to right the potential wrongs by going back in time, he creates even more problems. That is not an unfamiliar premise, but the author manages to breathe some fresh air into the plot and creates engaging characters to keep the reader involved.
I love time travel novels but often the mechanics of moving around in time are too vague or even ignored because of the difficulty of coming up with something that sounds plausible. In this book, Molinari doesn’t shirk from presenting a complicated view of how time travel could work, and he weaves a fast paced narrative around this. There are some interesting twists that I didn’t see coming and the ending wraps the plot threads nicely.
There were a couple of places that didn’t quite work for me, such as a scientist having the necessary credentials to get hired as a conservation officer, but I’ve yet to read a book that didn’t have some stretching and in this case, it worked well enough that it didn’t detract from my overall enjoyment.
I look forward to any future books this author writes and will be first in line to buy them.
I love time travel novels but often the mechanics of moving around in time are too vague or even ignored because of the difficulty of coming up with something that sounds plausible. In this book, Molinari doesn’t shirk from presenting a complicated view of how time travel could work, and he weaves a fast paced narrative around this. There are some interesting twists that I didn’t see coming and the ending wraps the plot threads nicely.
There were a couple of places that didn’t quite work for me, such as a scientist having the necessary credentials to get hired as a conservation officer, but I’ve yet to read a book that didn’t have some stretching and in this case, it worked well enough that it didn’t detract from my overall enjoyment.
I look forward to any future books this author writes and will be first in line to buy them.
August 10, 2016
I can now understand when people say they can’t put down a book. Wow, this book got me hooked right from the start. There’s never a dull moment and the passing of each chapter made me more eager and curious about the events and characters.
The author has weaved a complex plot with physicist Warren Harding taking the identity of a forest ranger to protect his life. Throw in time travel and a love triangle, the plot gets intriguing right till the end. I found the descriptions of time travel plausible and convincing. And that is a rare thing for a skeptic like me.
I thought the plot was well researched, superbly narrated and executed with good pacing and character development. A number of well-chosen quotes from famous movies were provided at the start of each chapter. For me, it was sheer déjà vu, as these were some of my favorite movies as well. To me, the author’s strength has been his ability to create well-rounded characters (Wade, Julie, Sara, Kurten) whom, as audience, we connect and care deeply. The narration was excellent – with the right amount and description and action. For book lovers, this is a prized read. The plot is something you will ponder for some time.
The author has weaved a complex plot with physicist Warren Harding taking the identity of a forest ranger to protect his life. Throw in time travel and a love triangle, the plot gets intriguing right till the end. I found the descriptions of time travel plausible and convincing. And that is a rare thing for a skeptic like me.
I thought the plot was well researched, superbly narrated and executed with good pacing and character development. A number of well-chosen quotes from famous movies were provided at the start of each chapter. For me, it was sheer déjà vu, as these were some of my favorite movies as well. To me, the author’s strength has been his ability to create well-rounded characters (Wade, Julie, Sara, Kurten) whom, as audience, we connect and care deeply. The narration was excellent – with the right amount and description and action. For book lovers, this is a prized read. The plot is something you will ponder for some time.
March 9, 2012
This was a very entertaining, fun and fast read. I like an easy read that takes me away. Mission accomplished with SNAP. I can recommend.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews