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Interim
By the end of the 21st century, TranSend Universal has developed a technology making instantaneous travel between any two locations an everyday reality. During the journey, the traveler's mind is stored in an artificial world known as Interim in which the traveler can experience, or be, anything. But there's a problem in Interim. Not everyone is returning. At least not alive. Evan Drake and Danielle Akins are called in to investigate. What they discover is beyond anything they could have imagined. Conrad Blake, head of TranSend and its vast corporate empire, is intent upon seeing that information die, along with both of them. When Evan finds himself trapped on a distant planet unable to contact Danielle, his only way home is Interim. But Conrad is just waiting for him to enter Interim, so that he can send his assassins. What's worse, there's something inside Interim that wants Evan dead. Something evil. Evan's only hope for survival is a mysterious woman who claims to be from his past.
296 pages, Paperback
First published December 10, 2008
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
June 21, 2014
An unethical businessman has accidentally discovered a method of transferring humans to other planets in the blink of an eye. He doesn’t quite know how it works, but it becomes THE way to travel and this man is now very powerful. Dark forces are massing, however…
Although this is a fairly well written novel, it failed to engage me for reasons I can’t fully explain. I didn’t feel any connection with, or sympathy for the characters. The bad guys were bad without any redeeming qualities. The good guys were almost too nice. The story was uneven. I didn’t feel excitement about returning to read it after a break.
The whole premise of the story didn’t feel real to me.
C.C. Bradley shows promise as a storyteller. The overall arc of the story was competently constructed. The use of language was good. Maybe the manuscript just needed a strong edit before publication?
It was close, but just not quite there yet.
3 stars.
Although this is a fairly well written novel, it failed to engage me for reasons I can’t fully explain. I didn’t feel any connection with, or sympathy for the characters. The bad guys were bad without any redeeming qualities. The good guys were almost too nice. The story was uneven. I didn’t feel excitement about returning to read it after a break.
The whole premise of the story didn’t feel real to me.
C.C. Bradley shows promise as a storyteller. The overall arc of the story was competently constructed. The use of language was good. Maybe the manuscript just needed a strong edit before publication?
It was close, but just not quite there yet.
3 stars.
November 10, 2014
(language, violence-sometimes graphic, drugs and alcohol) If you are a devoted X-file fan, you may find the story interesting especially if you like X-files fan fiction. This story has a decent plot, unfortunately in order to discover it you have to deal with a lot of excess baggage. I felt the book borrowed ideas from other works of fiction (the two main characters were similar to Scully and Mulder although excessively emotional; that a creature like the X-files Purity/ black oil attacks the character we are following in the beginning seemed a little too coincidental to me), but most of the actual plot line was original.
The entire story was more like a series of detailed scenes. Instead of giving the most important and interesting bits of information to us–the author gives us a blow-by-blow account of every little detail before whisking the reader away to another scene. This adds much repetition to the story and slows it. For example,
Some details were overly described but not well-researched. This caused problems with my ability to suspend belief. For example,
The author reveals information about the characters in awkward ways and the plot is filled with random plot twists that make little sense when presented but are thrown in to help the plot along at a later point. Characters also were precognitive, which irritates me in any book.
Some examples of this are: That was too contrived for my liking.
The over-explanation of details also created contradictions –
Because of the “scene” setup, time frequently flips forward and backward with a distracting papyrus font in some chapters. The waver between the action occurring in the past and present made it difficult to keep track of time. The POV switches abruptly, too. Even the swear words felt as if they were thrown in randomly. The lack of consistency in timeline, font usage, and plot elements made the plotline difficult to follow.
There were many parts of the book that drew me into to it, but that only made the rough parts more abrupt for me.
I received this book free from the author for an honest review. To keep my star rating unbiased on books I receive for review exchanges, I have developed a matrix available in a cataloged (11-9-2014) blog post for “On Being a Writer,” which I used on this book.
The entire story was more like a series of detailed scenes. Instead of giving the most important and interesting bits of information to us–the author gives us a blow-by-blow account of every little detail before whisking the reader away to another scene. This adds much repetition to the story and slows it. For example,
Some details were overly described but not well-researched. This caused problems with my ability to suspend belief. For example,
The author reveals information about the characters in awkward ways and the plot is filled with random plot twists that make little sense when presented but are thrown in to help the plot along at a later point. Characters also were precognitive, which irritates me in any book.
Some examples of this are: That was too contrived for my liking.
The over-explanation of details also created contradictions –
Because of the “scene” setup, time frequently flips forward and backward with a distracting papyrus font in some chapters. The waver between the action occurring in the past and present made it difficult to keep track of time. The POV switches abruptly, too. Even the swear words felt as if they were thrown in randomly. The lack of consistency in timeline, font usage, and plot elements made the plotline difficult to follow.
There were many parts of the book that drew me into to it, but that only made the rough parts more abrupt for me.
I received this book free from the author for an honest review. To keep my star rating unbiased on books I receive for review exchanges, I have developed a matrix available in a cataloged (11-9-2014) blog post for “On Being a Writer,” which I used on this book.
July 3, 2014
Imagine you no longer need to fly. We know, now, how to create a wormhole between two fixed points; we’ve cracked the secrets of time and bent it to our will. Step into a pod, the doors close and open almost instantaneously at your destination, even if it is a remote, outlying planet.
Except that it’s not quite that simple. Early attempts succeeded in transporting inanimate objects, but not living things; lab rats were dead on arrival. Then the discovery: The consciousness must be removed and stored during the journey, and reimplanted upon arrival (“reintegration”). In transit, it’ll be in Interim. This is a virtual place of your choosing – a beach resort, a ski lodge – and you’ll perceive your stay there as hours, maybe days, depending on how far you are travelling. Even though, in real space and time, your arrival is instantaneous. That’s the premise of C.C. Bradley’s intriguing sci-fi, Shadows of Forgotten Memory: Interim.
Interim begins strongly, with a diplomat on his way to a meeting on a distant planet. On the way, his consciousness is in a ski resort for several days. But something goes wrong in Interim. When he arrives, he is brain-dead. The incident is an excuse for the authorities to confront the operator, TranSend, which has a monopoly and has acquired a sinister power. Two intelligence agents, Evan and Danielle, are assigned to find out what has happened and get the dirt on TranSend. But they fall in love.
This is where the story slows rather. The love story of the two agents takes up too much space and is not really that interesting. The characterisation is also uneven. Sometimes it’s great; there is a hatchet-man for TranSend who comes across well, and there is also a pasty-faced, overweight nerd called Jimmy who discovers how to store consciousness by accident in the lab one night after too much beer and pizza. But several major characters – including the two agents – never really come alive; their love story is clichéd, and so is some of the dialogue in the book. The world of future Los Angeles is far too like the present – for example, a world in which we could build wormholes wouldn’t be one in which we used cars that sound a lot like today’s. Last but not least, the ending is a bit messy (though this is in part because there is a sequel).
On the other hand, the scientific premise behind TranSend and Interim is very well done and believable. Some of the action scenes are great – in particular, when TransSend’s enforcer tries to kill Evan. Moreover, Interim is a classic battle between good and evil, and that can make for one hell of a storyline. Without giving too much away, a late scene inside Interim itself sees good, in the form of the decent dead, confront evil in a way that is oddly moving.
Books that are clearly good or bad are easy to rate. When they’re very good in some places but weak in others, it’s more difficult. Does Bradley’s strong imagination on the science side outweigh the uninspiring main characters etc.? For me, it didn’t quite; I enjoyed bits of the book a lot, but I doubt if I’ll read the sequel. The committed sci-fi reader, however, will attach relatively more weight to Bradley’s scientific construct than they do to well-rounded characters. I’ve given Interim three stars but they’d probably give it four or five, and they’d be as right as I am. Books are a personal thing and sometimes there’s no “correct” verdict.
The author kindly supplied an e-book for review.
Except that it’s not quite that simple. Early attempts succeeded in transporting inanimate objects, but not living things; lab rats were dead on arrival. Then the discovery: The consciousness must be removed and stored during the journey, and reimplanted upon arrival (“reintegration”). In transit, it’ll be in Interim. This is a virtual place of your choosing – a beach resort, a ski lodge – and you’ll perceive your stay there as hours, maybe days, depending on how far you are travelling. Even though, in real space and time, your arrival is instantaneous. That’s the premise of C.C. Bradley’s intriguing sci-fi, Shadows of Forgotten Memory: Interim.
Interim begins strongly, with a diplomat on his way to a meeting on a distant planet. On the way, his consciousness is in a ski resort for several days. But something goes wrong in Interim. When he arrives, he is brain-dead. The incident is an excuse for the authorities to confront the operator, TranSend, which has a monopoly and has acquired a sinister power. Two intelligence agents, Evan and Danielle, are assigned to find out what has happened and get the dirt on TranSend. But they fall in love.
This is where the story slows rather. The love story of the two agents takes up too much space and is not really that interesting. The characterisation is also uneven. Sometimes it’s great; there is a hatchet-man for TranSend who comes across well, and there is also a pasty-faced, overweight nerd called Jimmy who discovers how to store consciousness by accident in the lab one night after too much beer and pizza. But several major characters – including the two agents – never really come alive; their love story is clichéd, and so is some of the dialogue in the book. The world of future Los Angeles is far too like the present – for example, a world in which we could build wormholes wouldn’t be one in which we used cars that sound a lot like today’s. Last but not least, the ending is a bit messy (though this is in part because there is a sequel).
On the other hand, the scientific premise behind TranSend and Interim is very well done and believable. Some of the action scenes are great – in particular, when TransSend’s enforcer tries to kill Evan. Moreover, Interim is a classic battle between good and evil, and that can make for one hell of a storyline. Without giving too much away, a late scene inside Interim itself sees good, in the form of the decent dead, confront evil in a way that is oddly moving.
Books that are clearly good or bad are easy to rate. When they’re very good in some places but weak in others, it’s more difficult. Does Bradley’s strong imagination on the science side outweigh the uninspiring main characters etc.? For me, it didn’t quite; I enjoyed bits of the book a lot, but I doubt if I’ll read the sequel. The committed sci-fi reader, however, will attach relatively more weight to Bradley’s scientific construct than they do to well-rounded characters. I’ve given Interim three stars but they’d probably give it four or five, and they’d be as right as I am. Books are a personal thing and sometimes there’s no “correct” verdict.
The author kindly supplied an e-book for review.
July 4, 2014
This book is a conventional tale of the megalomaniac ruining lives and the plucky individuals tasked with sorting it out doing their utmost to put a stop to the evil empire. It has been done many times before and will be done many times again. Set in the future, we are treated to a few technological marvels and a few everyday modern marvels seemed forgotten. I refer to the ability to put a phone call on hold while you speak to another person or retrieve a voice message. Here we had to call back later. Everyone is driving around in cars and vans when we have instant space travel at our disposal.
The author changes POV in mid chapter several times. This is confusing and he doesn’t pull it off quite well enough to avoid the jarring effect this error has on the reader. Even a line break would have helped.
A book with the following number of, what I refer to as, ‘indicative’ words, always will have a problem for me. When there are; 1660 Was’s, 343 Were’s, 738 Had’s, and 289 Did’s in a 90,000 word book then I know I am going to be told a story. A famous author once said that no child ever asked to be shown a story, and I agree with him. However, we tell stories as authors but we have to do it in a way that takes us on a journey of discovery, of being shown, not told, not being led, directed, pulled and even dragged sometimes through the detail of the story. If there was one tenth of the number it would probably be fine with me; this is simply too many ‘was’s’!
It was quite some time before I realized who the main characters of the story were meant to be. We met an awful lot of people in the first few chapters who seemed equally important until we got the two DIA agents in bed together; then the story began.
I couldn’t decide if it was a romance novel or a thriller. The two intertwined but the Dani character came across as a dependent, needful selfish wimp. I had no sympathy for her dilemma and wished she would just shut up and let Evan get on with it. He’s in danger, she’s in danger, he’s in danger, she’s in danger and so on, back and forth for just a few too many times, I felt.
I thought of Star Wars and Yoda when Samantha told Evan to let go of his anger and Harry Potter when the death-eaters emerged from the soil.
The climax of the story was something of an anti-climax in that we are not told enough about how the outcome had been achieved. I can’t say more than that without giving the game away.
I would like to give the book four stars but it left me feeling deflated after investing my time and concentrating on a story that could have been so much tighter, so much more entertaining without the rather over-romantic intervals pushed in our faces every few pages. Think of 24 or Fargo or even Star Wars where the romance element is almost zero. Does anyone think Prison Break would have benefited from a complete removal of almost all the female characters? This book would similarly benefit without the female lead, sorry to say.
So I award it three stars and wish the author well with his next book.
The author changes POV in mid chapter several times. This is confusing and he doesn’t pull it off quite well enough to avoid the jarring effect this error has on the reader. Even a line break would have helped.
A book with the following number of, what I refer to as, ‘indicative’ words, always will have a problem for me. When there are; 1660 Was’s, 343 Were’s, 738 Had’s, and 289 Did’s in a 90,000 word book then I know I am going to be told a story. A famous author once said that no child ever asked to be shown a story, and I agree with him. However, we tell stories as authors but we have to do it in a way that takes us on a journey of discovery, of being shown, not told, not being led, directed, pulled and even dragged sometimes through the detail of the story. If there was one tenth of the number it would probably be fine with me; this is simply too many ‘was’s’!
It was quite some time before I realized who the main characters of the story were meant to be. We met an awful lot of people in the first few chapters who seemed equally important until we got the two DIA agents in bed together; then the story began.
I couldn’t decide if it was a romance novel or a thriller. The two intertwined but the Dani character came across as a dependent, needful selfish wimp. I had no sympathy for her dilemma and wished she would just shut up and let Evan get on with it. He’s in danger, she’s in danger, he’s in danger, she’s in danger and so on, back and forth for just a few too many times, I felt.
I thought of Star Wars and Yoda when Samantha told Evan to let go of his anger and Harry Potter when the death-eaters emerged from the soil.
The climax of the story was something of an anti-climax in that we are not told enough about how the outcome had been achieved. I can’t say more than that without giving the game away.
I would like to give the book four stars but it left me feeling deflated after investing my time and concentrating on a story that could have been so much tighter, so much more entertaining without the rather over-romantic intervals pushed in our faces every few pages. Think of 24 or Fargo or even Star Wars where the romance element is almost zero. Does anyone think Prison Break would have benefited from a complete removal of almost all the female characters? This book would similarly benefit without the female lead, sorry to say.
So I award it three stars and wish the author well with his next book.
June 21, 2014
I loved Danielle and Evan. They are great lead characters and C.C. Bradley does a great job of making them come to life. I found myself rooting for both of them.
This book is perfect for the sci-fi/fantasy lover. Fans of dystopian future worlds need to visit Bradley's Interim world. The author has a detailed and really well thought out vision of how an incredible technology alters the power structure and perception of the galaxy.
My only reason for not rating higher is number of characters. Just when you're rolling with Danielle and Evan you get pulled to a different character. That said I also have to commend the author for the heart he conveys with Evan's first wife. It's rare to find the love/romance element in book firmly rooted in sci fi but C.C.Bradley has a little something for everyone with Interim!
I can for sure see Evan and Danielle's adventures continuing!
This book is perfect for the sci-fi/fantasy lover. Fans of dystopian future worlds need to visit Bradley's Interim world. The author has a detailed and really well thought out vision of how an incredible technology alters the power structure and perception of the galaxy.
My only reason for not rating higher is number of characters. Just when you're rolling with Danielle and Evan you get pulled to a different character. That said I also have to commend the author for the heart he conveys with Evan's first wife. It's rare to find the love/romance element in book firmly rooted in sci fi but C.C.Bradley has a little something for everyone with Interim!
I can for sure see Evan and Danielle's adventures continuing!
August 9, 2016
I am a fan of fantasy and sci/fi in any format. In fact, I usually prefer it to any other genre. So, I was excited to give Interim a try. The premise is one I haven't come across before and I found it to be very interesting. I felt that the characters were engaging and believable, especially Evan. I found myself wanting to keep reading to see what was going on with Interim. I found the writing to be clear and descriptive. On occasion, it did feel like the pacing was off just a tad. But, it wasn't an issue to keep me from wanting to finish the story. I look forward to continuing the series. If you are a fan of fantasy and sci/fi, I'd recommend this book!
August 4, 2014
I enjoy a good S.F novel, and found myself on familiar ground almost immediately here. Unfortunately, I found the prose rather forgettable, and the setting somewhat generic.
The book failed to engage me beyond the opening few chapters. A more textured setting, some unexpected twists and turns, and some more complex and relatable characters might have drawn me in more.
That said, this book does tick most of the S.F boxes; the book is well-constructed and polished, and I found the 'TransEnd' concept intriguing and thoroughly explored. I'm sure it will appeal to fans of the genre.
The book failed to engage me beyond the opening few chapters. A more textured setting, some unexpected twists and turns, and some more complex and relatable characters might have drawn me in more.
That said, this book does tick most of the S.F boxes; the book is well-constructed and polished, and I found the 'TransEnd' concept intriguing and thoroughly explored. I'm sure it will appeal to fans of the genre.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews