Quantum Coin: Review

Title: Quantum Coin
Author: E. C. Myers
Release Date: October 2012
Published By: Pyr
Pages: 340
Goodreads Rating: 4.03 stars

Review: Ephraim thought his universe-hopping days were over. But then an old friend crashes their senior prom: Jena's identical twin from a parallel world, Zoe. It turns out that Ephraim's problems have just begun, and they're much more complicated than his love life: The multiverse is at stake—and it might just be Ephraim's fault. The three of them band together to figure out how to save the multiverse, but ultimately, the solution may depend on how much they're willing to sacrifice for the sake of humanity - and themselves.

In general, no one ever likes sequels, but thankfully, QUANTUM COIN was an exception. I thoroughly enjoyed Fair Coin more than I had expected to, and the same is true for this follow-up, except I liked it even more. This has a full kind of story, by which I mean you can really sit down, open this, and get immediately enveloped into the plot. This is the sort of book that can really keep you occupied from start to finish without ever having the desire to poke plot holes or put it down for a bit. It's not that it's suspenseful per se, although there are certainly suspenseful parts, but the book itself is just inherently pleasurable to read.

By far the greatest aspect of this book would be the characters. Ephraim, Jena, and Zoe all feel like living, breathing people, and the character development they all experience is fantastic to read. Even better, all the different versions of themselves, be they "victims" of personality changes or age, have fascinating interactions and make for an entertaining but not confusing read. 

Most notable of all the character interactions would be Ephraim's love triangle with Jena and Zoe. Normally I find love triangles rather hard to believe and endlessly tiresome, but QUANTUM COIN does it differently. Because Jena and Zoe are different versions of the same base person, the fact that Ephraim has trouble choosing between them is actually believable, and the triangle itself is not done too heavy-handedly. I liked it in Fair Coin and it continues to work well here.

All in all, QUANTUM COIN was a superb follow-up to Fair Coin, blending together wonderful character development, an excellent romantic sub-plot, and fantastic pacing to a fast-moving plot to make a novel hard to put down. I look forward to picking up future books in the series, and recommend this book to anyone who enjoyed the prequel.