Book Review: LEAP, The Race is On Series Book 1, O.C. Heaton
Science Fiction: LEAP, The Race is On Series Book 1, O.C. Heaton
Blog Tour November 16, 2022
Sometimes you encounter a book that just leaves you shaking your head at the insight and intelligence of the author. When that book is combined with a decent plot it becomes even more attractive.
In LEAP, O.C. Heaton poses questions and dilemmas that might never have occurred to me. Dr. Uma Jakobsdóttir has followed in her father’s path to become one of the leading geothermal scientists in the world. Secretly, she has pursued another path her father initiated: instantaneous travel to anywhere in the world. Her father had done much of the groundwork for this technology. Uma had worked to complete it but needed a financial and business backer to make it a reality.
Enter Ethan Rae. Ethan is a businessman who specializes in making technologies better and cheaper, forcing other companies to match his prices or go bankrupt. He is also known for his philanthropy, donating 40% of his personal salary to worthy projects around the world. Uma has chosen Ethan to be her benefactor. Ethan is understandably wary, but once Uma proves that her technology works he is entirely on board.
Uma has drawn up four inviolable laws to govern the use of LEAP. 1) You cannot “copy” a person. You start with one woman, you end with one woman. 2) You cannot restore someone to life who has died by using an older LEAP copy of them. The files get destroyed with the demise of the person. 3) You can’t alter memory. Once LEAP scans a person, their memories are frozen in the computer along with a file of their physical bodies. If someone experiences trauma, they cannot use LEAP to restore their memories to an earlier version. 4) You cannot use LEAP to merge a person with another creature.
If you have read any fiction then you will assume correctly that these laws fall apart almost immediately. An emergency arises and two people get merged, one of whom was dead. Separating the two bodies changes the memories and personality of the living person. Before they are ready to release the technology into the world, they are confronting enormous ethical dilemmas.
Furthermore, despite their efforts to keep the project secret, a rogue businessman hears of it. At first he tries to make his own version. When that fails, he moves to corporate espionage, theft, and murder.
LEAP posits a seemingly impossible technology (though lots of other Star Trek technologies have come to be so who knows?). Buried within that technology may be an insurmountable number of ethical dilemmas. What is the point of saving the world if you decimate civilization to do it?
Our thanks to Zoe from Zooloos for our copy of LEAP, provided so we could provide an honest review as part of this blog tour. The opinions here are solely those of Scintilla. For other perspectives on this novel, check out the other bloggers on this tour.
Book Review: LEAP, The Race is On Series Book 1, O.C. Heaton