What do you think?
Echo
Echo Fray, crippled by regret, has wasted his life after the loss of his family……Or so he believed. Drafted by the elusive assassin, Natasha Vixen, Echo is given a chance at redemption when he learns time travel is real! Over the course of several years, he trains under Natasha’s direction to master his body and mind while harnessing the scientific properties which make time travel possible. As Echo faces a gauntlet of formidable enemies throughout his past, present, and future, secrets become unearthed that threaten everything he thought he knew. Now, he must choose to mend his life and be with the woman he loves or sacrifice it all to save a fractured universe.
283 pages, Kindle Edition
Published November 1, 2019
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
October 14, 2019
This review was originally posted on Books of My Heart
Review copy was received from Author. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.
3.5 hearts
Echo is a spacetime adventure with an interesting premise and story structure. When I opened my copy and it started at chapter 29, I thought maybe it got scrambled and I didn’t get a final version of the book. But this is by design, it is to help the reader understand where you are chronologically in the story and give the most emotional impact as things are revealed. Because the story jumps forward and backwards in time, it helped me keep my bearings.
Echo was the guy who never took a risk, didn’t go after the girl and fell apart after his mother’s death. After spending decades in prison, he is offered a bargain. He can spend the rest of his life exactly where he is, or he can be released into the care of a woman he has never seen before and take a different and dangerous journey with her.
Natasha has been time traveling/dimension jumping for hundreds of years. She even taught a few others how, but they’ve moved on from her and took everything she taught them to build their own personal paradises. That wouldn’t be totally bad, except they are taking things from other dimensions and time to do it creating havoc and the edges of spacetime are starting to fray and bleed through. Natasha needs Echo to help her destroy the men who are treating the universe like a candy store and figure out a way to stop it from unraveling.
I liked most of the story. There is just enough info on how time travel and spacetime jumping is supposed to work that I got it without it feeling like a lecture in the middle of a story. There are a few twists which had a nice emotional impact.
My only issues were, it gets a little cluttered at the end. There is a lot of time jumping, fighting, multiple same people and a weird chapter happening in the 5th dimension with some artistic liberties taken with how the words are written on the page that took a minute to adjust to. There is also one thread of the story I didn’t really understand why/what happened.
Overall, I’d say this is a decent sci-fi novel. Echo isn’t a perfect character, which makes him all the more relatable. He does some very questionable things throughout the book, but if you had control over spacetime what would be normal and acceptable to you after decades? For those of you like me that need a little romance in your reading there is a smidgen of one. It is adjacent to the overall story and never detracted from the spacetime adventure.
Quotes:
Act like we’re writing about Quark flavours or the subatomic composition of a meteorite.
That’s pretty normal, right?
I have acquired wealth and power and prosperity and freedom…and I never once stopped to realize – we’re still not happy.
I fear the past.
I neglect the future.
And life passes me by.
Review copy was received from Author. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.
3.5 hearts
Echo is a spacetime adventure with an interesting premise and story structure. When I opened my copy and it started at chapter 29, I thought maybe it got scrambled and I didn’t get a final version of the book. But this is by design, it is to help the reader understand where you are chronologically in the story and give the most emotional impact as things are revealed. Because the story jumps forward and backwards in time, it helped me keep my bearings.
Echo was the guy who never took a risk, didn’t go after the girl and fell apart after his mother’s death. After spending decades in prison, he is offered a bargain. He can spend the rest of his life exactly where he is, or he can be released into the care of a woman he has never seen before and take a different and dangerous journey with her.
Natasha has been time traveling/dimension jumping for hundreds of years. She even taught a few others how, but they’ve moved on from her and took everything she taught them to build their own personal paradises. That wouldn’t be totally bad, except they are taking things from other dimensions and time to do it creating havoc and the edges of spacetime are starting to fray and bleed through. Natasha needs Echo to help her destroy the men who are treating the universe like a candy store and figure out a way to stop it from unraveling.
I liked most of the story. There is just enough info on how time travel and spacetime jumping is supposed to work that I got it without it feeling like a lecture in the middle of a story. There are a few twists which had a nice emotional impact.
My only issues were, it gets a little cluttered at the end. There is a lot of time jumping, fighting, multiple same people and a weird chapter happening in the 5th dimension with some artistic liberties taken with how the words are written on the page that took a minute to adjust to. There is also one thread of the story I didn’t really understand why/what happened.
Overall, I’d say this is a decent sci-fi novel. Echo isn’t a perfect character, which makes him all the more relatable. He does some very questionable things throughout the book, but if you had control over spacetime what would be normal and acceptable to you after decades? For those of you like me that need a little romance in your reading there is a smidgen of one. It is adjacent to the overall story and never detracted from the spacetime adventure.
Quotes:
Act like we’re writing about Quark flavours or the subatomic composition of a meteorite.
That’s pretty normal, right?
I have acquired wealth and power and prosperity and freedom…and I never once stopped to realize – we’re still not happy.
I fear the past.
I neglect the future.
And life passes me by.
October 30, 2019
~Summary of Story
Echo Fray used to do the bare minimum in life, considering himself a failure in all things, until he met Natasha Vixen, a brilliant and yet unstable time-traveller. The chance of a lifetime transforms Echo from a failure, into a man with a mission- live the life he truly wants, with no regrets.
The story is told in a non-linear, yet meaningful way, showing the different stages in Echo’s training to become a time-travelling master. We see the separate lives that Echo and Natasha craft for themselves as they bend time to their will, with disastrous consequences.
~Characters
Echo and Natasha serve as the two protagonists in this story.
Echo Fray starts the story as a quiet and fearful man, having spent a good portion of his life behind bars, until the mysterious Natasha Vixen shows up one day and bails him out, much to his surprise. Echo is trained at first to become an assassin and though stubborn, he transforms into a thoughtful, methodical, intelligent, and courageous man by the end of the novel.
Natasha Vixen was a compelling character that I came to both love and hate. Mysterious, cunning, beautiful and intelligent, she seems to have everything going for her, including the incredible ability to travel through time. While learning more about Natasha’s backstory did make me feel sorry for her, I came to admire her determination to create a world without needless destruction. However, everything comes with a price. The amount of destruction Natasha ended up causing in her quest for a better world meant that she had essentially failed in her original goal.
~Writing
Love, loss and regret feature heavily in this novel. Betrayal of your true self is key, particularly toward the end, where Natasha foregoes her original goal by creating more destruction than there was originally.
The author’s writing style was conversational, as though Echo was guiding me through his experiences in the present tense. It felt like I was right there with him, experiencing everything first-hand.
The ending was sweet, a real heart-warming moment, with echo having learned to cherish the little moments of joy in his life.
~Memorable Quotes
From Echo, I found three particularly memorable quotes.
The first is:
‘The truth still existed, despite society’s attempts to destroy it.’
This particular quote stood out to me immediately. In our modern world, the truth is rarely something that we are given. The news today has become nothing more than pure tabloid gossip, filled with hateful opinions on both sides, and advertisements in between. As a society, we seem to be nothing a terrific job of covering up the truth, which begs the following question-
Why hide the truth? What are people afraid of?
The second quote which stood out to me was:
‘Nothing reminds a man how small he is like facing the great behemoths of nature.’
When faced with extremely difficult situations involving our own nature as human beings, we often realize just how small we are as individuals in this world. That’s not a bad thing per say: one individual can still have an enormous impact on the world. What I was reminded of is that the further we build up civilization, the more it feels (to me, at least) like we’re running away from not just our own nature, but from nature in general.
The third and final, possibly most powerful quote is as follows:
‘All we can do is try to live our best life right now- one that learns from the past
and plans for the future- one that doesn’t revolve around control and regret.’
This quote stood out to me as I realized that we all have ways of controlling our own lives, but in small ways. I often find that when I feel out of control, my OCD gets really bad. Everything has to be constantly moved to sit in a specific place, as if that alone could make me feel more in control.
Some people overeat to feel like they’re in control of something. Some people become addicted to substances. This quote had me thinking about how all of us seek control of our worlds in our own special ways. Sometimes, we don’t even realize that we have these little rituals, to make ourselves feel more in control, but believe me, they’re there.
As a species, we also seem to have trouble with repeating past mistakes, again and again, particularly when it comes to political issues and war. It’s as if we just don’t learn, as if we refuse to look back on the past to ensure a brighter future for humankind.
~Overview
Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed Echo and look forward to any future work Mr Leach decides to have published.
My rating: 4 stars.
Recommended: To lovers of science fiction that leaves you thinking.
Echo Fray used to do the bare minimum in life, considering himself a failure in all things, until he met Natasha Vixen, a brilliant and yet unstable time-traveller. The chance of a lifetime transforms Echo from a failure, into a man with a mission- live the life he truly wants, with no regrets.
The story is told in a non-linear, yet meaningful way, showing the different stages in Echo’s training to become a time-travelling master. We see the separate lives that Echo and Natasha craft for themselves as they bend time to their will, with disastrous consequences.
~Characters
Echo and Natasha serve as the two protagonists in this story.
Echo Fray starts the story as a quiet and fearful man, having spent a good portion of his life behind bars, until the mysterious Natasha Vixen shows up one day and bails him out, much to his surprise. Echo is trained at first to become an assassin and though stubborn, he transforms into a thoughtful, methodical, intelligent, and courageous man by the end of the novel.
Natasha Vixen was a compelling character that I came to both love and hate. Mysterious, cunning, beautiful and intelligent, she seems to have everything going for her, including the incredible ability to travel through time. While learning more about Natasha’s backstory did make me feel sorry for her, I came to admire her determination to create a world without needless destruction. However, everything comes with a price. The amount of destruction Natasha ended up causing in her quest for a better world meant that she had essentially failed in her original goal.
~Writing
Love, loss and regret feature heavily in this novel. Betrayal of your true self is key, particularly toward the end, where Natasha foregoes her original goal by creating more destruction than there was originally.
The author’s writing style was conversational, as though Echo was guiding me through his experiences in the present tense. It felt like I was right there with him, experiencing everything first-hand.
The ending was sweet, a real heart-warming moment, with echo having learned to cherish the little moments of joy in his life.
~Memorable Quotes
From Echo, I found three particularly memorable quotes.
The first is:
‘The truth still existed, despite society’s attempts to destroy it.’
This particular quote stood out to me immediately. In our modern world, the truth is rarely something that we are given. The news today has become nothing more than pure tabloid gossip, filled with hateful opinions on both sides, and advertisements in between. As a society, we seem to be nothing a terrific job of covering up the truth, which begs the following question-
Why hide the truth? What are people afraid of?
The second quote which stood out to me was:
‘Nothing reminds a man how small he is like facing the great behemoths of nature.’
When faced with extremely difficult situations involving our own nature as human beings, we often realize just how small we are as individuals in this world. That’s not a bad thing per say: one individual can still have an enormous impact on the world. What I was reminded of is that the further we build up civilization, the more it feels (to me, at least) like we’re running away from not just our own nature, but from nature in general.
The third and final, possibly most powerful quote is as follows:
‘All we can do is try to live our best life right now- one that learns from the past
and plans for the future- one that doesn’t revolve around control and regret.’
This quote stood out to me as I realized that we all have ways of controlling our own lives, but in small ways. I often find that when I feel out of control, my OCD gets really bad. Everything has to be constantly moved to sit in a specific place, as if that alone could make me feel more in control.
Some people overeat to feel like they’re in control of something. Some people become addicted to substances. This quote had me thinking about how all of us seek control of our worlds in our own special ways. Sometimes, we don’t even realize that we have these little rituals, to make ourselves feel more in control, but believe me, they’re there.
As a species, we also seem to have trouble with repeating past mistakes, again and again, particularly when it comes to political issues and war. It’s as if we just don’t learn, as if we refuse to look back on the past to ensure a brighter future for humankind.
~Overview
Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed Echo and look forward to any future work Mr Leach decides to have published.
My rating: 4 stars.
Recommended: To lovers of science fiction that leaves you thinking.
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