Tuners

Tuners is a 2020 young adult science fiction by Aaron Frale. It was released in March of 2020. It is the first novel in the Tuners trilogy. The series is about people with the ability to travel between universes. I discovered the novel while browsing Goodreads one day.

The novel follows a 17-year-old by Jon Xiong. After a strange encounter at the local mall, he finds himself being confronted by a dangerous cult, only for a mysterious group called the Tuners to save him and his father at the last moment. He discovers he has the rare ability to tune, or sense and travel to alternate universes, and the cult, the Order of the Flame wants him for his ability. The Tuners begin training him in their ways to fight and he soon finds himself in the middle of a war between those who want to maintain order in the multiverse and those who want to destroy it.

One of the most unique aspects of the novel is the way inter-dimensional travel works. Rather than travel between universes relying on fancy machines, the core thing that makes it possible is sound waves and the ability to sense frequencies of other universes where the barrier between universes is thin. It was definitely an interesting take on how travel between universes could be possible. Within the story, the reader is shown a variety of universes that exist. The history of each universe, and even the rules of physics, change with each one visited and that allowed the author to show off a great deal of creativity, and a number of the ideas displayed are intriguing to say the least. The author also did an excellent job of connecting early events in the story to events towards the end. It showed that the author paid special attention to the details that were being included in the story and not introducing things with no significance. The fight scenes in this novel are well-written and exciting. They’re written with the right amount of tension in each scene and the pacing was perfect to make the scenes fast-paced without making it seem like they’re being rushed through or that there were no stakes involved in the fight. The novel has a lot of strengths that surprised me and made me wonder why I hadn’t heard anyone talk about this book before.

While I enjoyed a lot of things about this novel, there were a few areas where this novel could use improvement. My first criticism would be the pacing of the novel. With the exception of the fight scenes, the pacing of this novel could be improved quite a bit. The plot moves in fits and spurts, which made it difficult for me to stay engaged in the story. There were points where I’d forgotten about major plot points because the pacing made these events not seem as important as they should’ve been. I wasn’t a big fan of the romance in this novel. It felt very bland and overall, I wasn’t invested in it. I wasn’t able to get very invested in the characters either. This novel is more plot-driven than character-driven, which there’s nothing wrong with, but I didn’t connect with any of the characters. There wasn’t anything I disliked about the characters, I just felt very neutral towards all of them. My biggest complaint about the novel, however, is about the plot twists. One plot twist was hinted at very heavily in the story to the point that I was beginning to feel like the twist wasn’t meant to be a twist, until it was revealed and the narrative treated it like a shock. A second plot twist had so little foreshadowing to it that it felt like the author added it at the last minute for shock value. Not only was the twist not properly foreshadowed, but it didn’t make sense with the rest of the story and the characters involved. While I wanted to enjoy the novel, the problems I had with it caused me to lose some of my enjoyment.

Tuners is a book with a very good idea at its core. It displayed a great variation of different universes and introduces an interesting method for inter-dimensional travel. At the same time, the novel has pacing issues and problems with pulling off the plot twists. The author has talent, but at the same time, there are some areas where improvement is needed in order for the book to go from “good” to “great”. I’d recommend the book to someone looking for a quick read, though not someone looking for hard sci-fi.

Rating: 2.2 Stars

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