Fair Coin

April 23, 2012
Myers' debut begins with an intriguing premise, but ultimately falls short. Teenager Ephraim Scott's mother is distraught when she is called to identify her son's dead body, the shock of which impels her to commit suicide. However, Ephraim returns home and wakes her up before she succumbs to the combination of pills and liquor. Later, going through the belongings of his deceased doppelganger, Ephraim discovers a mysterious coin. With a flip, this magic coin grants Ephraim's wishes (e.g., that his mother would reform her ways; that the girl of his dreams would notice him), but with a priceâeach wish transports Ephraim into a parallel universe (which explains the dead lookalike). When an enemy from another universe shows up looking to take advantage of the coin, Ephraim must harness the coin's power to stop him and get back to his "home reality." Myers' concept is gripping and thought-provoking, but he stumbles between too many characters and twists, and the layering of multiple universes minimizes the emotional impact of characters' decisions, conflicts, and deaths.

February 1, 2012
A spin through parallel universes schools a teenager in the hazards of making wishes. Ephraim comes home one day to find his troubled mother in the midst of a suicide attempt--having just, she claims, viewed his body in the morgue. More puzzling still, among the corpse's effects is a strange-looking quarter. When prompted by a mysterious note in his school locker, he tries making a wish on it, and, to his amazement, his mother is suddenly out of the hospital with no memory of the day before. Complications ensue as further wishes hook him up with classmate Jena but also ring in other, unexpected and increasingly disturbing changes. Horrified to learn at last that the coin is actually a mentally controlled part of a device for traveling among alternate realities, that each "quantum shift" he makes forcibly switches him with an analog of himself and that the rest of the device is in the hands of a casually violent version of (in his universe) his best friend Nathan, Ephraim sets out to make amends. Ephraim's strategy of returning all of his displaced analogs to their original planes simply by retracing his travels doesn't hold water (you can't go home again when every change from quantum events up spawns a new reality), but by the end he's earned the self-confidence to make fresh starts with both mother and girlfriend. The frequent shifts make it hard to keep track of who's where in this dizzying debut, but Ephraim's ability to see past the temptations of power despite an active teen libido provides him with a sturdy moral base. (Science fiction. 13-16)

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April 1, 2012

Gr 8 Up-Ephraim is dead. At least that is what his alcoholic mother thought when she downed a bottle of pills in a suicide attempt after identifying his corpse. Ephraim comes home in time to save her and at the hospital discovers that the victim of a bus accident is his doppelganger. He is like Ephraim in every way, even down to the library card in his pocket. Among the dead boy's effects is a commemorative quarter that shows Puerto Rico as a state. Later, a note in his best friend's handwriting instructs him to make a wish and flip the coin. He wishes his mother out of the hospital. Then he wishes her into a better job. He shares the coin with his best friend, who insists he knows nothing about the note. Soon they are wishing themselves on dates with their secret crushes. But Ephraim notices that the wishes sometimes come with unforeseen complications, making him hesitant to keep using the coin, much to the chagrin of his buddy. Eventually Ephraim discovers that the coin is not magic but is technological in nature and soon he is skipping across parallel universes, running for his life, and trying to undo the damage his "wishes" have caused. Myers's debut novel is an entertaining, exciting science-fiction adventure. Occasional inconsistencies and discussions of theoretical physics are not enough to spoil the story for teens, who will identify with the protagonist's desires and angst.-Anthony C. Doyle, Livingston High School, CA

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