LitRec: Mark Jeffrey

Being a part of the Twilight fanfiction community has given me the opportunity to continuously define myself in new and different ways. Reader, author, beta, and friend are just some of the words that represent who I am, or who I strive to be in this community. More recently I define myself as podcaster. I spend time and money on sitting down with three other lovely ladies from the community and gabbing about Twilight fanfiction.

Before I ever thought of doing my own podcast, I listened to and enjoyed many of the thousands of other podcasts out there. They are fun, free, informative, interesting, and a good way to spend the commute to school or work.

So, when I found a podcast that combined with one of my favourite things, YA fiction, I may have squeed for joy.

The Max Quick series of books is intelligent, mysterious, and intriguing. It makes you think about the story and the characters, and the nature of existence.

And it was released as a podcast. Or a podiobook, as they are called.

Now, I spend a lot of money on books. A lot. Somewhere around one thousand dollars a year, which may not seem like that much to some, but for a student who works eight hours a week, it is. I’m not even sure if I make one thousand dollars in a year. So, you can imagine that I was pretty darn excited when I learned I could download a quality book for free through iTunes or podiobooks.com.

For those of you who don’t like audio books, there are many other ways to enjoy this book, and I will be discussing them at the end but for now I’m going to get straight into the story.

"On April 8th at exactly 3:38 in the afternoon the world stopped. That is to say, except for some people ..." is how the first book, The Pocket and the Pendant, begins. And then it just doesn’t stop.

The book opens earlier in the day on April 8th and follows and young boy named Max Quick, an orphan who doesn’t remember his parents or where he came from but as the day goes on it is clear that other people, very strange people seem to know him.

An old lady recognizes him from her childhood and tells him he hasn’t changed at all. A man stealing something from a museum seems to know who he is as well. And as the world stops around him the mystery of who he is and where he came from becomes even more important.

As Max journey’s through the city after the time stop, he discovers other children who have also not been affected by the time stop and mysterious clues about what is going on and who is causing it.

I love the obvious research that went into this book. The author has a clear understanding of the history of humanity, of physics, of science fiction, and of religion. And he blends them all into one fabulous story. Whatever your first guess is about what is going on, I guarantee you, it’s wrong. And just when you’re having a Kingdom of the Crystal Skull moment (aliens?... seriously?), the author brings it all together into a very neat package that finished the story but still leaves you desperate for more.

One of the things I loved about the story happened when Max finally encounters someone who can answer his questions and you know from a plot perspective that certain questions cannot be answered just then. Rather like when Harry asks Dumbledore why Voldemort wanted to kill him in the first place at the end of Philosopher’s Stone. And the very stereotypical answer, the answer that Dumbledore gave to Harry in fact, is “You’re not ready to know.” And, of course, the reader knows that what is actually meant is the author doesn’t want you to know just yet. In this book, the refusal to give answers was very seamlessly woven into the plot and it felt realistic.

I’m not going to say too much about the ending for obvious reasons, but I will say that it was laid out perfectly. The story shows you everything you need to guess the ending but still it was a surprise (for me at least) that worked so well with the story and the characters. There isn’t a big battle or anything, it is simply a clash of wits and a well played trick.

My favourite part of listening to this book was, well, listening to it. It’s a book that was written to be an audio book. The author has a very good understanding of what can be done with an audio book. Each chapter has music and sound effects. The emphasis is on dialogue over description, though the description is never lacking and everything is delivered in a very tangible way. It makes the story seem real on a level other audio books have never really seemed to me.

The second book, The Two Travellers, I enjoyed even more than the first book. The children are teenagers this time, just graduating from high school, and instead of a cross country journey to save the world, they split up and take journeys that are both figuratively and literally into their subconscious.

We are introduced to new, and even more mysterious, enemies and suddenly the importance of discovering who Max is becomes paramount to the characters survival.

The book also takes a classic sci-fi theme, time travel, and puts a unique twist on it, making it believable and weaving it in to both philosophy and physics. And it leads to one of my favourite lines, “back then, in the future.” Love it.

In an interview the author, Mark Jeffrey, mentioned that when writing this second book, more so than the first, he had a specific theme in mind. What if at the end of the Lord of the Rings, after all the struggle and battle, what if throwing the ring into the volcano was exactly what Sauron had wanted Frodo to do? And the whole story was just you playing right into his hands. The adage, “what you resist, persists,” is exemplified perfectly in this story and the ending leaves us with just the right amount of despair and hope.

I cannot quite say how impatiently I am waiting for the third book which is due out this august I believe.

Another reason I wanted to get these books known in our community is because of the many different ways they are published. I know there are a few fanfiction authors out there who are interested in becoming published authors and this man, Mark Jeffrey, has become a successful self-published author. These two books as well as being available for free audio download, were published with lulu.com and are available there as well as amazon.com, and barnesandnoble.com, as normal hardcover or paperback books. They are also available on the iTunes App store.

This story is filled with depth, humour, philosophy, good characters, action, mystery, and it’s free to listen to. I highly recommend it for your commute to and from work/school. If you’re anything like me you might just skip school and ride public transit all day because you need to know what comes next.

Or maybe I skipped work...yeesh.

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Moon.witche is author of Echoes of an Enigma, and a host for the awesome podcast blog, Temptation Twilight. You can usually find her speaking of thespians, editing some sound file for the podcast and huffing indignantly when it goes awry because she knows as well as I that technology is secretly out to get us, or spreading love and being a generally kind and sweet-natured individual who is full of win and awesomenicity.