Seven Point Eight by Marie Harbon

Synopsis: 

Seven Point Eight is a twist of sci-fi confusion that asks some interesting questions. If you had special abilities to travel out of body, what would you do with them? Where would you go? What would secret agencies do with these abilities? And ow far could you go?

A physicist begins a quest to measure the soul but soon finds himself drawn into the world of the enigmatic Max Richardson, where research is sold to the military at the highest bid. However, he soon discovers another purpose when an extremely talented young psychic enters his life. He devises a project and builds a team to stretch the frontiers of exploration, only to make a reality-shattering discovery…

Review: 

Ultimately this book has a great concept. It's very science fiction at it's core, that someone can find a way to project themselves to other parts of the world and then later, realizing they can do it to places as far away as other planets. There are other species if you will in the book, once again another science fiction element, and one done quite nicely. I didn't feel like anything was to contrived or didn't fit with the story. 

As with most science fiction books there is almost always an element of science that the author portrays to the reader, to explain how the mechanics of the world the story takes place. I felt like in this book the author did a pretty good job explaining everything on a level that was decently easy to grasp even if you didn't do so well in high school physics. 

That being said there were some confusion issues within the book. There were several times where I felt I had to go back and reread a couple of passages to makes sure I understood what was going on. I think it was partly a case of too much going on too quickly and partly a case of moving timelines. While the author does make an obvious effort to try and make it as easy as possible for readers to understand what is going on and when, I felt that sometimes it fell a little short. 

There is also a romanic element in this book, one I very much appreciated, mainly because it added variety to the situations and kept the book from becoming to one directional. That being said I found Tahra to be way more likable than Max. There relationship felt rather forced by Max through much of the book. And when you add in Paul I have to say that while he is more likable as a character his situation makes things precarious at best. 

Overall, I think this is a really intriguing concept, and it was decently executed by the author. I think there are a lot of elements which may have made it more difficult to make everything super easy for the reader to pick up on. I think if you like science fiction then this book should be a nice read for you, especially if you like a little romance in your science fiction.