Mr. JM Book Review: The Lab by Jack Heath
by Mr. JM
Jack Heath is a young author and his first book was written while in his teens. And he has done a good job of it but his youth shows through. The book is a good read, paces along rapidly through a scifi world of domineering corporations and those who fight the good fight, and it will likely do well in the Young adult market.
It lacks a little in the complexities needed to make an adult-class thriller; for example the soldier-bot has a list of capabilities that make it practically invincible, the corporation has active search teams looking for the Six of Hearts agent of the Deck, and he is in the presence of an unethical woman who obviously has close connections to the corporation, yet Six takes on the soldier-bot in battle.
To compound the error, the woman apparently feels only slight surprise in seeing her deadly bot almost beaten by someone who hasn’t seemed, up till that point, anything out of the ordinary.
I’m not sure I was ever a standard YA reader, so I can’t really judge if the things I feel are lacking in The Lab will also be seen so by a YA reader. It reminds me in some ways of ee “Doc” Smith’s writing – Kimball Kinnison survived things that should have killed, there were ultimate weapons that somehow he managed to overcome, (and a new ‘ultimate’ weapon in the next chapter) and even though those things griped me, I read quite a lot of Smith’s books.
The criminals are apparently of genius level, but dumb, the characters are mostly a bit two dimensional… as I said, Heath’s youth is showing. The story rocks along, building towards the climax, but in the end, I was left a little disappointed with how things resolved. I watched the latest series (series 4) of Doctor Who and felt a bit the same at the end – I felt the author or producer had been intellectually lazy in wrapping things up as they did. Too many things not resolved properly and no proper explanation.
Overall, the book is a good albeit a little light, read. It reads like the comics DC and Marvel publish, the story of a superhero learning to deal with the world around him and having almost impossible adventures along the way. It needs depth and character development and the services of a good Editor, but if it was in picture format with a glossy Marvel cover, I’d accept it without a murmur.
I look forward to Heath’s writing when he has learned his craft and has more experience with the world.
October 26th, 2008 at 11:20 am
pretty good review. i was hoping you weren’t going to give it 10 thumbs or something. it’s a decent story, but no characters and no depth. good job.
October 26th, 2008 at 10:43 pm
I’m glad you appreciated the review.
November 7th, 2008 at 12:52 am
You’ll be pleased to know that Jack Heath has indeed gotten much better. The sequel to The Lab, Remote Control is a big improvement (and it won some awards, I think). And his non-sci-fi book, Money Run, is really cool too.
You haven’t seen them yet because Heath’s US release dates are two and a half years behind the Australian ones.
November 7th, 2008 at 5:24 pm
Hi there! Good review - nice and even-handed. Thanks for the feedback.
Cheers,
Jack
P.S. I won’t tell my editor what you said about her.
November 9th, 2008 at 5:39 pm
JF - Actually, we do have a copy of Remote Control. Mr. JM has yet to review it.
Jack - Thank you for stopping by. It’s not often we get the authors here.
November 15th, 2008 at 7:06 am
Thanks for commenting folks…
rz: I tell ‘em as I sees ‘em. If I comment dishonestly thdere will be those who take what I say, find out it isn’t so & never read what i say again. Why piss off those you don’t need to?
jf: As JM says, we have Remote Control but I haven’t managed to get to it yet - I will though, & I’ll let you know what i think.
Hey Jack, thanks for reading - and if your editor gets a bit pissed, I’ll happily talk to her about it. LOL
It wasn’t a major detraction, but there were things that should have been picked up pre-publish.