Jeff is a successful entrepreneur. Over the years he built up his electronics business to a small chain or retail outlets. He had two failed marriages and accepted his employees as his family. Somehow his prostrate condition slipped through the cracks. Facing death, he goes back to his roots and the pain he endured in his dysfunctional family. Fate wants to deal him a second hand in life. In Book II, we learn what happens after he becomes a celebrity.
Size: 1429 KB (282,223 words)
Genre: Time Travel
Sex Contents: Some Sex
Tags: mt/ft, mt/Fa, mt/mt, Consensual, Romantic, Time Travel, DoOver, Incest, Mother, Sister
Review by Markw [other reviews by Markw]
Reviewed:
This is one of my favourite themes - man dies/goes to sleep and and wakes up either as his younger self back in time or simply goes way back in time. No, not being sexist here - so far I haven't found any stories where the hero(ine) is female (although Oz Ozzie's Lost did have a heroine who went forward in time) - so authors - start thinking about this twist to this type of tale.
Following on from Rebirth (I) Jeff is still 12! OK so you can put that aside for a while, but he does an awful lot of things during the period he is 12. Patents, inventions, writing, buying property, developing it - well this isn't strictly true - more like he 'borrows' the idea from others and passes them off as his own.
Step back a book which, in the case of Rebirth II, must be read to understand what is happening. Jeff has somehow (we never get told in either book I or II exactly how or why unlike other stories of this ilk) gone back in time from being aged 58 (in 2004) to age 12 (in 1958). After a number of adventures and many patents and inventions later we enter the world of Book II - Jeff is still 12 although his teens are fast approaching.
Unfortunately this is where belief starts to become stretched quite a bit. Jeff accomplishes so much in the time he is 12 you really start to wonder where he has the time to go to school, save the goodies, kill the baddies, write novels, write screenplays, write songs and even breathe! During this time frame he is not only doing all the things described quite well in the story, but he is also doing things only hinted at - writing 24 page submissions for patent applications (which at one point we are informed he has done for over 100 patents) - and all of this without a computer to write everything up just a trusty old typewriter!
The story itself is quite well written - well if it weren't for obvious spelling errors and other mistakes which are so obvious to anyone without experience in editing it really is a wonder why they were released - especially as the author, John Wales, insists the story is being editing (hint - John - either you aren't applying the editors corrections or really need to check the work coming back to you before posting each chapter).
The plot is best described as slow - as I said, Jeff has been 12 for what seems like 3 to 4 years now he has done so much in that time. And this is probably one of the big flaws of Rebirth - both I and II. The hero, Jeff, simply does too much in a short span of time.
A moral dilemma is that many (most?) of the things he 'invents' or writes are simply - well, for want of a better word - stolen. The ethics of this are mentioned but glossed over early on in the story, but he continues to do them. He writes 'Jaws', 'Star Wars', many of the number 1 songs from the 60's, 70's and later and passes them off as his own. Similarly with inventions - and boy! How many inventions - the sheer number he comes up with and the variety indicates he has a brain with far better recall than anyone I know or have ever heard about.
But then, this is a story isn't it? And, basically a reasonably well thought out and written one at that (John - please! Check the editing more thoroughly before submitting each chapter though...). Put aside your thesaurus, dictionary and Style Manual when reading this and try to enjoy the story as a story - put belief aside and it may well be a story you come back to more than once. At the time of writing this review, Rebirth II is up to Chapter 32 - I'm not sure how many more chapters there will be or if this will suddenly end or even if a third book is planned for the series - but unless something major happens in the next few chapters - well Book I was only 15 chapters and Book II is now more than twice as long and we still haven't covered more than 13-14 months of the hero's new life! In other words - it is looking at becoming an Epic!
And, of course there are many twists that can still be taken (for instance, can he prevent the death of Marilyn Monroe, the assassinations of the Kennedy's, John and Robert, Martin Luther King etc? He is starting to look like becoming, in the story at least, wealthier than Bill Gates - or maybe this is who he looks like becoming in the story - after all, Microsoft as a name hasn't been registered as a business name in 1958 or 1959 had it?). But will they eventuate because of the twists and pulls Jeff is doing to the timeline as we know it.
There is some sex in the story - Jeff managed to gather a harem about him in Book I and they are still there in this book - in fact he even manages to bring a male into his harem - but don't let this put you off the story - Jeff is, after all, only 12! And, although there are a few longish sex-passages, the story does not revolve around sex.
