Reading at warp speed

A year after the release of his debut novel The Lab Jack Heath has followed it up with a thrilling sequel. Remote Control picks up the action eight months later. Agent Six of Hearts and his clone Kyntak have spent several months searching for their abducted baby sister Nai. When Methryn Crexe, the mastermind behind the superhuman project, escapes from the Deck's prison Six and Kyntak are sent on a mission to find him. Kyntak is kidnapped during the mission and with the Deck suddenly turned against him Six finds himself on his own in the effort to rescue his brother.

Like The Lab, Remote Control is action-packed from beginning to end. There is no shortage of plot twists and turns to make this a real page-turner. In fact the pace was so fast I sometimes found it difficult to keep up with what was happening. It's a case of 'blink and you'll miss it' so I found myself frequently rereading passages to make sure I didn't miss anything.

The entire story takes place within the space of twenty-four hours which reminded me of the TV show 24. In 24 it's completely implausible that so much would happen to one person in a single day and without so much as a toilet break but Remote Control gets away with such a compressed time line being a science fiction novel as it is.

The strength of The Lab was its rich cast of characters and so with the sequel I was expecting Heath to develop those characters further, in particular the main characters Six and Kyntak but I was a little disappointed on that front. Heath pushed the characters to a certain extent but not enough for me to feel that they had evolved in any significant way. If a third novel is written it would be nice to see some of the action sacrificed to allow space for further growth of the main characters.

With Remote Control Heath has cemented his place as a young writer of true talent. He has once again delivered the goods to his readers with a story that is both exhilarating and unpredictable.

The story is set in a small seaside town called Whitepoint and its three main characters have one thing in common - those discovering it for the first time) will undoubtedly find that isn't a problem with this book.

Karin van Heerwaarden

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Remote Control

Author: Jack Heath
Publisher: Pan Macmillan
Price: $ 16.95

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