You may remember that I went to comic con. I actually can’t shut up about it and the awesome panel I went to where Fair Coin was recommended. I wrote a review of Fair Coin, the first book in this series, and immediately wanted to start the sequel, Quantum Coin. Here is the synopsis from its profile on Goodreads:
Ephraim thought his universe-hopping days were over. He’s done wishing for magic solutions to his problems; his quantum coin has been powerless for almost a year, and he’s settled into a normal life with his girlfriend, Jena. But then an old friend crashes their senior prom: Jena’s identical twin from a parallel world, Zoe.
Zoe’s timing couldn’t be worse. It turns out that Ephraim’s problems have just begun, and they’re much more complicated than his love life: The multiverse is at stake—and it might just be Ephraim’s fault.
Ephraim, Jena, and Zoe embark on a mission across multiple worlds to learn what’s going wrong and how to stop it. They will have to draw on every resource available and trust in alternate versions of themselves and their friends, before it’s too late for all of them.
This sequel takes the story to the next level quite literally. Ephraim thinks his experiences in the multiverse are over now that he’s back in his home universe and the controller dismantled (or so he thinks) but a new adventure is just beginning. It can be so hard for sequels to live up to their originals but Myers keeps his original idea of the fascinating multiverse and created a new adventure for them.
Make sure to pay attention to every word of this book because it moves at a breakneck speed, taking you to new universes full of new people…but do they count as new if they’re analogs of characters we already know? I’m going to going to get into a little bit of analysis here that could contain some **light spoilers** so stop reading here if you’re spoiler-sensitive!
Something I love about the Coin series is that the the characters can actually tangibly see versions themselves who have made different decisions than them and where it takes them, who it turns them into. This books reminded me that we are our decisions, we create so much of our own reality by the choices we make. We should take seriously the ways we treat others and how we let others treat us. It sounds trite but the saying is true: we can’t control what happens to us, but we can control how we react to it. I don’t know if this was a conscious message from the author or if it’s purely something I read into but I really enjoyed it.
I love the complex and layered story Myers crafted for this sequel and I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend it to anyone who enjoyed the first book. The only thing I found myself wishing for was a little more depth to the new characters he introduced. The “villain” had a very heartbreaking story that could’ve used a little more page time in my opinion, even if it was only a conversation or two exploring those parts of his or her past. If anything I would’ve made the book a little longer or made it into two books so that I could have this great story AND a little more quality time with the characters.
