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<\/p>\nEight Minutes, Thirty-Two Seconds<\/em>\u00a0by Peter Adam Salomon<\/p>\n PseudoPalms Press, 2019<\/p>\n ISBN-13: 978-1093780673<\/p>\n Available: Paperback,\u00a0 Kindle edition, audiobook<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Eight Minutes, Thirty-Two Seconds<\/em>\u00a0has a fascinating concept, and turns out to be more relevant to our times than I\u2019m sure the author expected. Taking place in the near future, I\u2019d say this is more a sci-fi thriller than horror. Our protagonists are L and M, the only two occupants of a gigantic bunker on an Earth where all life appears to have been destroyed. Neither L or M have any memory of their lives prior to waking up in the bunker, and the parameters of the AI in charge are set to make it almost impossible to discover what happened and who they are. Their only escape is a drug that flatlines them for eight minutes and thirty-two seconds. During that time they \u201cjump\u201d into the minds of one of six gifted teenagers secretly working together on a complex, mysterious, and fatal project.\u00a0 L and M are only able to get short glimpses, though, and have difficulty remembering what they\u2019ve seen once they\u2019ve been \u201cbrought back\u201d. It takes an extended flatlining on M\u2019s part, and rapid repeats of inducing her death on L\u2019s part, to piece together the six teenagers\u2019 terrifying plan and the consequences of its results.<\/p>\n While the idea is interesting, and puzzling the pieces together was enough to keep me reading, the lack of character development in this book is a serious flaw. Because L and M don\u2019t have memories, and don\u2019t seem to have much interest in even exploring much of the bunker, it is hard to get a sense of who they are and what they\u2019re like. It\u2019s unclear why they have to die repeatedly to learn about the past or why flatlining would specifically take them to random parts of these specific teens\u2019 lives. Outside of all being genius-level intelligent, it\u2019s also not really clear why these teens would choose to work together. While their leader is clearly alienated from humanity, others seem to have positive relationships, and their willingness to participate was confusing to me.\u00a0 Although I ultimately found it to be unsatisfying,\u00a0 I appreciated Salomon\u2019s creativity,\u00a0 and there were enough unexpected moments to keep me reading it all the way through in an afternoon.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Editor\u2019s note:<\/strong>\u00a0\u00a0<\/em>Eight Minutes, Thirty-Two Seconds\u00a0\u00a0<\/em>was nominated to the final ballot of the 2019 Bram Stoker Award in the category of Superior Achievement in a Young Adult Novel.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" *Cross Posted from the Circulation Desk.* Eight Minutes, Thirty-Two Seconds\u00a0by Peter Adam Salomon PseudoPalms Press, 2019 ISBN-13: 978-1093780673 Available: Paperback,\u00a0 Kindle edition, audiobook Eight Minutes, Thirty-Two Seconds\u00a0has a fascinating concept, and turns out to be more relevant to our times than I\u2019m sure the author expected. Taking place in the near future, I\u2019d […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[18,121,89,20],"tags":[329],"class_list":["post-2037","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-reviews","category-post-apocalyptic","category-science-fiction","category-ya-books","tag-bram-stoker-awards"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3Eu9f-wR","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/ReadingBites\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2037","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/ReadingBites\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/ReadingBites\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/ReadingBites\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/ReadingBites\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2037"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/ReadingBites\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2037\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2038,"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/ReadingBites\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2037\/revisions\/2038"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/ReadingBites\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2037"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/ReadingBites\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2037"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/ReadingBites\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2037"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}