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 A diamond in the rough Sep 20, 2009
I found some obscure reference to this book linked from someone's personal blog, and it sounded interesting so I decided to give it a try. I will say it IS an interesting story, and kept my attention the whole way through. This is the "diamond" part. But it was a bit plodding at times and I just wished they would get on with their "discoveries". The personal affairs and drama in between (if you can call it that) was, unfortunately, not very compelling. Nor was the dialog, which was as flat and boring as a piece of wood. This is the "rough" part. And, yes, there are a lot of typos and more than a few grammatical issues. I found it distracting a couple times, but since it's clear this is a self-published book, I tried to give the author the benefit of the doubt and tried not to let it bother me.
The end of the book was VERY bizzare, not what I was expecting, but not altogether bad. It was one of those endings I kept thinking about for hours afterwards and may have to re-read to understand (I just finished it last night). And towards the very end there were a lot of scientific gaps all of the sudden that the author must have injected just to make the story work. For example, and this is the only part I will give away, as the book concludes and the scientists start tweaking the timeline and therefore altering their own pasts and the past of Earth, they are somehow not affected by everything, even though the rest of the world is. The author just says they are in a bubble because of their proximity to the lab. And some of the characters start behaving oddly as their personal timelines change, i.e., they become "un-born" yet do not disappear, just become comatose. But if they are supposed to be in a bubble then why would they change at all? Or why does one guy forget what he used to know, and the others do not? It was just very inconsistent and unbelievable. As with movies, if you can suspend belief for a while and just go with the flow, then it's pretty interesting.
So, a diamond in the rough. If Aurthur C. Clark, Asimov, Vernor Vinge, or even Crichton had written it, it would have been true diamond all the way through. My advice, as with most books, is to find it at the library.
 Great stuff! Jun 24, 2009
Once I sat to read a chapter I would sit for over an hour reading two or three. The Ninth Cube has a great story line that sucks you in like a black hole. I can't wait to start reading The Butterfly Virus.
3 of 3 found the following review helpful:
An absolutely STUNNING Thriller! Dec 03, 2008
VERY READABLE! Nicely written as a techno thriller true to the genre, The Ninth Cube, takes the reader on a journey into the world of high energy physics and the quest of one man to solve the theory of everything. We first meet Dr. Daniel Lamb as he prepares to send a message parchment back in time by placing it in a higher dimensional device known as a hypercube. We learn that hypercubes can traverse the event horizon of a black hole, created in the CLA or Casimer Laser Accelerator. As Daniel and his team delve deeper into this technology they discover secrets to what really happened at the Trinity Site and what the government has been hiding ever since.
Daniel also transforms during this journey when he realizes his life is not complete. He grows closer to his chief scientist, Tanya Galen, and is drawn to her through the synergy they share. Just when it looks like Daniel and Tanya have solved a problem another one appears to challenge them. When a band of ruthless terrorists gains CLA technology, Daniel is forced out of his lab and into the secret world of the Sterling Foundation. We meet Lee Sterling who worked on the Manhattan project and has links to the League of Concerned Scientists. As the story unfolds, the team creates a secret society in the past to help safeguard the hypercubes in a race throughout time.
This original story is like nothing you have ever read before. Written in a fresh style, this book will entertain readers with an open mind who have a quest to solve some of their own mysteries.
1 of 6 found the following review helpful:
 Unreadable Dec 02, 2008
This will be a very short review because I was quite simply unable to read this book. Within a few pages I had discovered so many misspellings, grammatical errors and obvious editing errors that I thought I was attempting to read something from an amateur press.In addition the writing style was horrendously irritating, stiff, awkward and dull. No-one spoke naturally, every word was complete without the usual contractions that speakers use in real life (even very intelligent scientists)and so it read like an academic paper. The first bit of 'unusual' science I met made me groan: putting parchment into an accelerator. I knew at once I could not read more without throwing this book at the wall, the time-honoured way of celebrating a really bad book.
5 of 7 found the following review helpful:
Great Science Thriller! Aug 30, 2008
Fresh and original, hard core science thriller. Not for the faint of heart!
Wow, I was totally immersed and enthralled in this story. Author does an excellent job of explaining complex scientific theories like string theory and relativity and intertwines a spiritual symbolism that is very reminiscent of the late Carl Sagan. Some of the dialogue is very scientific, but is written in present tense, and this really put me into the beat of the story. Characters are vivid and have depth, something most techno-thrillers lack. The relationship between Daniel and his chief scientist, Tanya, is very entertaining and realistic.
The story line is heavily based on research and speculation, and moves very fast at times, but again this adds to the present tense realism that drew me into the story. I look forward to Book 2 in the series, and after the ending in this one, I can't wait to see the next one.
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