Reverse Polarity

by Kelly Crigger

When a rare gem from the South Pole reacts with an electric current, a Coastal Virginia housewife discovers a way to capture the earth’s magnetic field and turn it into an abundant, clean energy source. But clean doesn’t always mean safe and technological breakthroughs have a habit of disrupting economies and changing human history.

Laurel Arley, named after the mountain Laurel that only blooms in June at high elevations, abandons her stay-at-home-mom lifestyle to grow Trinity, a corporation dedicated to capitalizing on her discovery. Almost overnight, cars fly and city-states can be built on platforms and parked high above international waters to make their own laws and determine their own destinies. Asphalt, rubber, combustion and jet engines become obsolete and terra firma land loses value. Trinity and its magnetite engines cause massive unemployment, economic turmoil, and a redistribution of power as oil prices drop to pennies. Like the internet and drones, technology removes human restrictions and replaces it with boundless creativity...which isn’t always good.

Tampering with the magnetosphere has consequences and before long, the field cannot sustain all the pressure put on it. When it collapses, letting deadly solar radiation in, what’s left of the human race is forced to burrow underground. The housewife who revolutionized the world becomes the woman who destroyed it and goes on a desperate journey to reverse the damage.

Reverse Polarity is the story of a family’s struggle to stay a family after their world-changing discovery of magnetite, a mineral that interacts with the magnetic field and allows mass to float effortlessly inside the magnetosphere the same way a submarine displaces water. Magnetite becomes a burden that rests squarely on the shoulders of a Coastal Virginia mother who cannot stop her profit-crazed business partners...or herself.

298 pages, Kindle Edition

Published March 31, 2019

About the author

I’ve written for a plethora of Mixed Martial Arts outlets and in 2007 wrote Title Shot about my journey through the world of professional fighting. That led to two books about Greg Jackson's fighting techniques. A few years ago I met Zak Bagans and struck up a friendship. We decided to write a book about the paranormal together which hit the New York Times bestseller list in October, 2011 and released a sequel in 2015. I wrote a dark humor book about midlife called Curmudgeonism. My debut novel, The Comfort Station, was released in 2016. I'm also the President and owner of Graybeard Publishing.

Reviews

[Brian Driver · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reverse Polarity is a wild ride! It’s one of those books that has something new on every page – an idea, a family issue, a key development, a ramification… heck, a mob of angry out-of-work citizens – and a lot of them don’t splash when they appear, so you have to keep on your toes.

If you’ve read the blurb (or even if you haven’t), the title refers to the discovery of an element called Magnetite – often treated as throwaway slag by mining companies – that, when technologically enhanced, becomes the biggest development since the wheel. In fact, it’s SO big that it might just cause the end of the world.

While that might sound typical of a line in a book blurb, it is a very real consideration here. Magnetite, as developed by the three main protagonists in the beginning of the book, can not only serve as an antigravity device, it can also propel what it’s suspending. And therefore, in one fell swoop, it has replaced and devalued petroleum as earth’s most valuable political element. And that which rises under its power can be almost unlimited in size, so imagine: one can build a city and fly it out over international waters. Just think of the ramifications of that. And the WEALTH!

Author Kelly Crigger’s book is rife with these concepts, and perhaps the most unusual thing about it is that it changes course in the middle in a manner that is both radically different and yet continuous at the same time. No spoilers here (unless you count what’s also present on the back cover of the book) but the book jumps to a point 15 years later, changes the protagonist, changes the focus, and changes the whole tenor of the novel. What’s happened to our characters? What’s happened to their technology?

What’s happened to the world?

I had great time reading Reverse Polarity, and I loved that the author had the guts to tell a story in this unconventional manner. It’s an anarchic style, and it’s great to see conventions being broken. But – all that said – I did have problems with the occasional mechanical, grammatical issues, though I know that’s what happens with “outside” literature. But, for instance, the book had a
Prologue, and it had a Part II… but there’s no Part I? I know it’s just an oversight, but it’s just a bit sloppy.

Anyway, Reverse Polarity is a gas (get it?), and it has a pretty big storyline (or two) within it, with real surprises. I found it to be a hoot, and enjoyed it a great deal.

[Kelly Crigger · Rating 5 out of 5]

Best book ever, but I may be biased.