Ghost Country

GHOST COUNTRY
Patrick Lee
Harper
2011
Paperback
ISBN: 978-0-06-158444-2
374 pages
$ 7.99

Alternative universe – time travel – these have been science fiction dreams for years. What if you discovered or had access to a device that could bridge two time periods, years apart, in the same place? What if you could actually travel into the future and back? Could you see the financial gains if you could easily commute between the two?

Paige Campbell and her colleagues had just met with the President of the United States to discuss a recent discovery when her motorcade was attacked. Being discovered in the wreckage by the attackers, she is pulled out and captured but fortunately maneuvers her cell phone to make one last phone call with instructions to a another colleague to from Tangent, a secret governmental facility for these other world interactions.

Bethany, the colleague, enlists Travis Chase who previously was also employed with the group but left after some problem. She also lets him know about a particular metal cylinder that was shown to the President that seems to be a portal in time. The two join in a quest to save Paige and the cylinder.

Ghost Country is a non-stop action and adventure novel. Yes, the characters do occasionally rest but your mind doesn’t as it races through the pages. The plot is well-developed. The characters are realistic in that they have a personality and a value system, even flawed.

Ghost Country is the sequel to Patrick Lee’s first novel, The Breach. This novel works as a standalone, but would be better with having a stronger understanding of the issues in The Breach as well as the relationship between Paige and Travis.

Overall, the book is enjoyable and definitely encourages me to read the first book, The Breach. Some of the plot lines in the last third were almost choppy and not developed as well as the beginning however, I wondered if that would have been alleviated if I had read the previous book. I was disturbed by the author’s interpretation of the chain of command with the leadership in the executive branch. His fictional succession would not be allowed in our country.

Patrick Lee is a native of Michigan. He has sold screenplays to movie studios, but they were never produced. Since then, he has begun to become a successful novelist with Ghost Country being his second book published.

Overall, Ghost Country is a great fictional escapist read for anyone who enjoys fast-paced science fiction, or at least what we hope if science fiction.


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