The Fold – Peter Clines

Mike Erikson is gifted with a photographic memory and high intelligence, but is working as an English teacher in a small town. An old friend asks him to travel to the California desert in order to audit a scientific project that seems to have discovered teleportation. But things soon go wrong.

The premise is reasonably clever, but unfortunately the execution falls short. Apart from Mike himself, the characters are anything but memorable, and much of the plot is spent on administrivia without much depth. The dramatic moments fall flat. It feels like a mid-budget science fiction tv show episode that has been stretched to three times the adequate length for the story. I could not maintain interest and gave up halfway through.

Flybot – Dennis E. Taylor

Physicist Dr. Philip Moray is working on remote sensing technology for asteroid mining when he discovers a small artificial fly in his lab. This leads him and his colleague, physician Dr. Celia Hunt into a rabbit hole of sentient AI and terrorism.

The premise is mildly interesting. The execution is not. If not for Mr. Taylor’s knack for dialogue and sarcasm, I would not have finished this novel. The characters are straight out of central casting, and specifically American central casting at best. It reads like a low-budget made-for-TV thriller.