Review::Nobody Gets the Girl by James Maxey

Nobody Gets the Girl by James Maxey

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Nobody Gets the Girl by James Maxey

So here we have an admitted superhero novel and I wasn't sure what to expect. It has a prologue and I'm not usually a fan of those. Add to that the content of the prologue dripped of definite cartoon-y tropes. Then we move to Richard Rogers your everyman; married with a geeky job and a penchant for enjoying entertaining at comedy clubs.

I have to give the writer some extra marks for having the poor man have to make the decision about cheating on his wife when his own fantasy encounter with a supposed comedy club fan makes her entrance. At that point though the reader is still wondering where this is going. After reluctantly staying faithful he returns home for the night and sneaks into bed so as not to wake the wife. The next morning he wakes up to find out that he's nothing more than a ghost in a world that has been turned on its head.

From this point forward the novel develops a clear plot with good writing and a fine pace. It takes a while of wondering what is happening before the good Dr. Know. shows up to straighten things out. The Dr.'s answers are not all that welcome when he tells Richard that he's been erased from history because of the Dr.'s experiments with time travel. Conveniently the Dr. has decide not to time travel anymore because of the consequences and he therefore can't get Richard's life back. That leaves Richard with a decision of whether to live out the rest of existence as a wandering ghost or join the Dr. in his fight to bring peace to the world.

The doctor's two lovely daughters sweeten the deal; at least until Richard uncovers the fact that the whole family is dysfunctional.

I found the plot quite easy to follow and the writing was well done making the story easy to follow though some major parts of the plot were predictable. The overall story idea and several of the threads seemed original in the manor in which things were put together and there was at least one point where I almost felt, as a reader, that we were moving into one of those Robert Heinlein utopia scenarios. But James Maxey deviously turns some of that on its ear, as the thread of the dysfunctional family starts leaving the reader worried about the the direction that the Dr. is trying to take his utopian world.

There are no easy outs and no simple solutions and this is not a good verses evil superhero novel. These are complex characters that drive a story that is full of complex threads that all come neatly to an interesting conclusion. And even though Nobody gets the girl, no character in this story makes it through totally unscathed.

Great Sci-Fi for the Sci-Fi fans; contains some interesting notions about time and reality.

J.L. Dobias



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