Jumper by Steven Gould

Jumper by Steven Gould

Jumper starts off with lots of action. We see Davy Rice about to get whipped with a belt buckle by his Dad. He "jumps" out of the scene. We then see him in another bad situation, we get another "jump".

Davy's decided that life on his own has to be better than life with his dad. Like his mom, he leaves home. For various reasons, he winds up in New York. We see him learn to control his jumps while getting into successively (is that a word?) worse situations. Then, he makes a jump that changes his life for the better. He meets a girl and things really start looking up for Davy.

Throughout the book Davy wonders whether he is the only teleporter (another non-word?) alive. He wonders why there is so much evil in the world. He wonders why his mother left when he was 11.

He finally tracks down his mom, but a strange situation takes her from him again and Davy vows revenge. He gains more and more control over his power, but not enough control over his emotional life. He gets mixed up with the NSA. The good stuff starts going bad.

Then Davy takes control and turns things around again. We are left with many questions about Davy and his abilities.

This book only gets 3 of 5 stars. Although it was filled with action, the action seemed pointless. Sometimes Gould would flashback into scenes that didn't need a flashback. Davy made stupid decisions that even a child under 7 could see were stupid. The plot was very convoluted and many things had to happen to bring it to a resolution, and those things didn't always make a lot of sense. Still, I found it hard to put down and pretty much read it straight through. I thought the idea of "jumping" could go many different ways. Davy's ponderings about the government and the NSA involvement were very telling. I actually enjoyed the book and know many middle school boys who would get a kick out of it.