If heavily armed elves, a demonic conspiracy, and a girl genius doesn’t sound like a wild enough ride, how about Pittsburgh being the epicenter of a dimensional rift. Welcome to Wen Spencer’s Tinker, a book that is an adventure worth every page!
Now, here’s a serious issue I have with writers who try to combine science fiction with fantasy. Most of the time, it fails…miserably. I really believed you could never truly combine both genres seamlessly without the final work resembling the 80’s epic blunder, KRULL. Usually, science fiction and fantasy when meshed together is nothing more than that…a jumbled mesh of devices…
…but Wen Spencer has broken the convention and married both genres together in her latest novel, Tinker, a jam packed, wickedly funny, and thoroughly entertaining adventure that brings Elves and their magic toe-to-toe with hoverbikes and Quantum Physics.
This is the unexpected adventure of the local girl genius who runs a scrapyard in Pittsburgh. Everyone knows her as Tinker, and the girl is gifted. She makes MacGyver look like a pretty boy with a pocket knife. When she’s not customizing her own computer system, she’s enhancing hoverbikes and resetting the standards of technology. A good deed one night begins a chain of events that make Tinker the most popular girl across the dimensions with Elves, government agents, and ancient creature hell-bent on ruling the world…
…and all this is happening in Pittsburgh which is a dimensional epicenter between Earth and Elfhome. And you thought being a teenager was tough. Try being one living in two universes!
What makes Tinker as real delight is in Spencer’s ability to combine both the mystical elves of Elfhome with future Earth. While the elves still hold a control over magical ley lines and mystical tattoo runes, Tinker manages to explain most of it through biochemical and genetic explainations, and even theoretical physics…and all of it makes sense! Spencer’s world is clever, desireable, and an extremely fun place to spend some quality time in. Get ready for one wild ride on a hoverbike with Wen Spencer and Tinker!
Rating: 5 out of 5
Tinker by Wen Spencer
Publisher : Baen; First Edition (November 4, 2003)
Hardcover : 352 pages
ISBN-10 : 0743471652
ISBN-13 : 978-0743471657
