AUTHOR: TIM TIGNER
FICTION
RATING:
7 out of 10
Suspenseful and entertaining throughout. Solid page turner and loved Tigner’s writing style. He combined a highly cerebral storyline with popcorn action that satisfied on all levels. Certainly recommend.
THEMES
Science | Aging | Quality of Life | Fulfillment | Money | Legacy | Immortality | Morality
KNOWLEDGE FROM THE PAGE
“You and I will never know if the fountain of youth exists. There is one simple reason for this… Revealing such a grand discovery would be foolish… and no fool is going to find it.”
Tigner really makes the reader think throughout the story… nothing is spoon fed to us (which I love). This is not only true in regard to what is on the page but he also makes us reflect on our own life choices and morals as well. What would we do if given an opportunity that we perceive would infinitely benefit our life but we could never tell anyone… would we take it? What if we had to leave the life that we know and the people we love in it… would we still take it? All these questions and more are asked and answered… a true thrill ride.
“How much tennis and golf could a person play? How many cruises could he take? How many fancy dinners could he eat?” – We all love vacations as much as the next person but isn’t it largely due to the contrast of our ‘normal’ life that makes a vacation feel so good? If we don’t have black to make the most of white… everything turns grey.
“I got the ultimate prize and I feel like I earned it. And I got the fortune that’s commensurate. On the surface, my life is perfect. Right now there’s not a woman in the world who wouldn’t trade shoes with me.” – Sometimes we don’t understand or initially comprehend how much we lose by gaining. Are we, as humans, supposed to live in this care free happiness bliss that we all think we desire? I don’t think so. I think we are supposed to struggle… I think there’s something more important to our psyche than unbridled happiness. I think we need to feel satisfaction. The satisfaction that comes with achievement… from having worked and produced and accomplished. This is an ongoing cycle to maintain healthy satisfaction and ‘happiness’… we can sustain this by rehashing our past accomplishments for some amount of time but eventually we need something else… something new… to light our fire.
What do we seek in life at base level… “Purpose, Service and Elite Company” (Elite not in necessarily in status)
And, in the end… “It turns out like everything else… Immorality? Yeah. It looks like the solution to all our problems, the thing that will bring you everlasting happiness. Until you get it. Then your mind adapts and resets, and you find yourself faced with a new and equally compelling set of wants and wishes.” – Can’t we all relate on some scale… an unfortunate mental construct that we can’t seem to overcome.