Too often to review a book I have to get it back open, just to look up the title. Not so with The Socket Greeny Saga by author Tony Bertauski. Mr. Bertauski told me Socket Greeny was his first fiction work, and it is excellent. I have him noted as an author to follow.
The main character is seventeen but this is not YA fiction. Bertauski grabs your heart and does not let go. You care about Socket Greeny. Socket finds everything and loses it: his family, his place in the world, his friends, his identity. At the end you still wonder what happened and what will happen next. The book ends but the story does not, yet there is no cliff hanger, no obvious sequel. Instead the ending brings the loose threads together and leaves us Socket.
The Socket Greeny Saga is a trilogy that flows seamlessly from one book to the next. In fact my Nook version had no separation between the books, other than a periodic “Discovery” or “Training” or “Legend” interspersed in the text there was no way to know which book was which.
The plot is interesting, especially the first book of the trilogy, Discovery. Socket Greeny and his two friends Chute and Streeter go into Virtualmode during study hall and get into trouble. Socket inadvertently triggered a time slip that causes his Mom to pick him up from school and take him to the secret training facility for the Paladins. Paladins are humans with improved abilities, especially mental abilities, who are sworn to protect humanity.
In Books one and two Socket has to come to terms with his new abilities, learn and grow and develop mental powers. Socket’s recurring enemies, duplicated humans that look and act just like real people, attack. Socket is able to stop the duplicates, first with his friends and then by himself.
Book three starts with Socket, now a full Paladin, taking a wormhole trip to a remote outpost. Somehow he is kidnapped on the return trip and attacked by the real, ravenous enemy that the Paladins know nothing about.
Now Socket realizes that not only must he save the Earth and all his friends and family, he must save the universe.
The book could have gotten a bit ridiculous at this point. A seventeen year old universe saver? A ravenous enemy that kills all worlds? That can come to live with one cell? Instead the book turns inward, where we see Socket’s emotional depth when he realizes he has been betrayed and nothing is what he believed.
I loved the characters, especially Socket and the grimmets. Tony Bertauski did what too-few authors do when writing YA science fiction, and explored the inner depths of people and how they reacted to the events and threats. The story was well written, interesting and fast moving. It seems authors tend to skimp on plot or character or setting or good dialogue and writing style, but The Socket Greeny Saga had all four.
Just a few minor complaints.
The ending was ambiguous. What happens next? Socket is awake now, does he stay awake? Does he drift off again?
What about the grimmets? Did they die at the end? Or did they, and their world, survive?
Why did Socket stay sane and human when others just like him did not?
The hallucinogenic sequences during the testing and training were a bit much.
But overall, this was excellent. Tony has a generous offer in the end of the Nook version to request any free E book from him. After reading The Socket Greeny Saga you can bet I quickly took him up on his offer!
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