Impulse

By: Steven Gould

Narrated by: Emily Rankin

Length: 11 hrs and 33 mins

Publisher's summary

Cent has a secret. She lives in isolation, with her parents, hiding from the people who took her father captive and tortured him to gain control over his ability to teleport, and from the government agencies who want to use his talent. Cent has seen the world, but only from the safety of her parents' arms. She's teleported more than anyone on Earth, except for her mother and father, but she's never been able to do it herself. Her life has never been in danger. Until the day when she went snowboarding without permission and triggered an avalanche. When the snow and ice thundered down on her, she suddenly found herself in her own bedroom. That was the first time.

©2013 Steven Gould (P)2012 Audible, Inc.

Still a good book

It would have been better without the political crap stuffed in for no reason, but still a fun listen

A great book

A wonderful book that I found to be developmental and maturative for a young man coming of age such as myself. I found this book to be exciting and engaging. I found great relation with the protagonists and I further highly recommend this book.

Child's Play

Is there anything you would change about this book?

I first read Gould's Jumper when it came out in pb more than 20 years ago. It was a great story and well executed. I found out he had a sequel after the movie "Jumper" came out. The sequel was okay, not as good as Jumper, but well done except for the change in the "Jumper" universe to match that of Griffin and the movie. The change was not for the better.

What was most disappointing about Steven Gould’s story?

I did not listen to the reviewer who complained that this was a child's (young adult) story, after all, I read the first Harry Potter and it was aimed at a similar age. However, this book comes across as a 14 year old girl's pov (I know Cent is 16). If I had really wanted to read a book on teenage angst and the perils of high school gym... well, I wouldn't want to read that story. Unfortunately, after four hours of listening, I don't know that I can go on with it. There's just nothing happening.

I may update this review if I manage to finish the book, but it isn't looking good. For someone who wrote Jumper, this is a total departure.

Would you listen to another book narrated by Emily Rankin?

Yes.

Could you see Impulse being made into a movie or a TV series? Who should the stars be?

I don't know, a couple of teenie boppers?

Any additional comments?

In the future, pay more attention to the listener reviews.

loved it

Amazing series, not what I expect after seeing the movie of the 1st book. which is a good thing.

Good just not as good as the first two

Liked the story just slower, a lot slower than the first. The new voice threw me off and at first I was kind of ticked because I liked the male reader, but the new one was good too.

toned down

This novel in the series is very much toned down. Most of it is high school drama related, but the style is just as great. Definitely helped having read the other books in the series. There's a lot of references. Great read, just a little toned down....

Much better than book 2

The first book in this series was great. The second one, not so much. However this book was as good as the first. I could hardly wait to get to the end. Highly recommended.

Worth the read.

While I do enjoy this series, the books so far do seem to follow a predictable pattern of someone learning how to jump. My only real issue is with the narrator, not the author. I wish she had spent a little time learning how to pronounce aerie, gunwale, or even ethernet! It really makes a story less enjoyable when words aren't pronounced correctly.

Love the story!

The story is awesome, since the first book it follows a progression that make sense. There’s no feeling of sequels pushed for the wrong raison. The only thing bothering me is the change of narrator, I have a hard time enjoying the story with this one.

Black mark on the series

I'll start by saying, I chose to listen to this novel despite other reviews because I didn't want to miss any plot points leading into the 4th book, which looks interesting. This was a mistake. There are no plot developments in this book. Nothing of lasting import happens. I suggest skipping ahead.

Where the first book was about Davey resolving emotional trauma, and the second was about his imprisonment, this one is almost entirely about their daughter and her trials as a teenager. The only problem with this character-centric story is that the character is uninteresting. She is the perfect child in every way. She's good at sports, a genius, beautiful, loved by all, has super powers that she uses frequently in front of people without anyone noticing, and doesn't fail at a single thing through the whole book. In short, she's not a realistic human being.

As other reviewers have said, this is very much a high school drama (heavy on the drama) and has almost nothing to do with Davey and Millie. Not my cup of tea to start with but I have enjoyed such things from time to time. However, the character issues make this a bad book even for that genre. To be fair, there is a good bit of action. Cent does her share of butt kicking but she always wins without effort. There is no suspense. The only bit that piqued my interest was when the NSA came into it but it was over within 15 minutes and nothing came of it. All the more disappointing after I spent the whole book HOPING the NSA would capture Cent to put a stop to her nonsense.

There are other problems as well. Cent has a nemesis that is pure evil to the extent that she has the same problem as Cent's character. No shades of gray. She also has a posse who are all, likewise, one-dimensional. Gould tried to remedy this with an explanation for their behavior at the end but it was unconvincing to me, not to mention disturbing...

Cent discovers that she can use her teleportation ability to manipulate her speed. For one, I have trouble believing that Davey never thought of this, considering it was he who realized decades earlier that teleporting effects frames of relative motion. That aside, Cent uses this ability at literally every opportunity with little regard for observers. Issues with its use are also overlooked. For example, she uses it to gain inhuman bursts of speed running, ignoring the fact that the sudden acceleration would cause her to trip. Moreover, all the effects to her body of high speed impact and sudden acceleration are ignored. This might not be so jarring if the author had not, up to this point, given significant consideration to the physics of "jumping" previously. I had very much enjoyed the attempts to make the physics consistent and this oversight was a disappointment.

Then there's the old problem of the characters having seemingly read and memorized every book in existence and teenagers speaking in very unnatural manners for their age. Presumably, these teenagers converse as the author himself would if he could go back in time. Not only does Cent manifest this but also her boyfriend and, to some extent, her friends.

The narrator was wonderful and deserves none of the blame. She did a great job with making Cent's voice sound like that of a teenager and was pleasant to listen to. The male voices were a bit off but only to the usual degree when mimicking the opposite sex.

I will probably still go on to the 4th book because the synopsis sounds much more exciting but I can't say this one was encouraging.