Clean: A Mindspace Investigations Novel, Book 1

I can be an impulse buyer sometimes and I had gift cards from the holidays and my birthday and the book concept sounded interesting so I bought the first three books. This review is about all of the books, not just the first, "Clean". I managed to slog through the books though there were several times I almost quit. The stories do have some redeeming features but also had major flaws and irritants. I almost rated this two stars but decided I'd be generous since they did engage me enough that I got through them.What's good about the books? Well, they are reasonably well written in general. Editing is OK (except for not cutting some tedious and boring parts as described below.) The author does the detective / mystery parts OK which is largely what kept me reading. I was interested enough to see how the plot turned out to keep reading despite not liking much of what I was reading. While there wasn't anything really unique about the story world the concept of "mindspace" was interesting and the author gets some points for trying to weave a somewhat interesting Blade Runnerish future world.Now the bad... The main bad points are that the main character, and many of the main supporting characters, are pretty pathetic and depressing and the world building isn't really well thought out and is inconsistent and unbelievable in many ways. As many other reviewers have noted, the main character is pretty weak and pathetic. Making him a former drug addict could have some interesting potential but the author goes way overboard turning the "hero" of the story into a weak, emotionally crippled, pathetic loser. She goes on and on and on about his drug cravings and his emotional frailty. He breaks down or has panic attacks over just about everything. Many times I wished I could jump into the story, smack the main character in the face, tell him to put on his big boy pants and get over it. His drug addiction and emotional issues dominate the story and detract from the overall plot. I felt in many ways these stories were more about the main character's struggles with everything in life and the rest of the plot was just window dressing. The main supporting character, the rather predictable attractive female cop that our "hero" has the hots for (but of course can't express) is similarly unlikable. She has her own emotional issues stemming from some past tragedy (six years ago in the story) causing her to have trouble letting anyone get close to her. She is also an angry hothead who flips out and punches our "hero" in the face on more than one occasion. Of course, he takes it and gets even more depressed about how unworthy he is and how he deserved it. I can certainly understand characters having weaknesses. It makes them more human and believable and can help you relate to them and care about them. But in this case the author goes WAY overboard making for boring or irritating reading and I ended up seriously disliking many of the characters in the book.The world building is also weak and ill thought out. The dystopian future features a world that is afraid of "Tech" due to a world tragedy where some madman took over the technology of the world and millions died. As such there is an anti-tech mentality where there are no cell phones and people have to have extensive background checks to be allowed to use a computer of which there are not many. OK, somewhat interesting and it sets the stage for the telepathic guild which saved the world in some unspecified manner but had to get "really scary" to do so. The author uses the tech war as a prop to explain the Guild and why they have so much autonomy and are feared and disliked by "normals". However, the author is obviously not very knowledgeable scientifically as there are major inconsistencies. The world has flying cars with anti-gravity and advanced biotech and other examples of advanced technology that would be pretty hard to imagine without computer support. The idea that you can't have cell phones but can have flying cars is ridiculous. There were other inconsistencies or poorly developed ideas about the story world that detracted from the story.Lastly I'll mention a minor irritant regarding the way the author had the main character talk/think. The story is in first person form which is OK though not my favorite. The real issue is the tendency to use word repetition in way that I found very irritating and that contributed to the perception of the main character's inadequacy. It must be dozens of times throughout the books where we encounter sentences such as "I couldn't let her go by herself. I just couldn't." "I won't let that happen. I just won't." "I won't do that. I won't." I guess this repetition is supposed to portray some kind of conviction but I found it childish and indicative of the character's pathetic and immature nature. Does he have good, well thought out reasons for acting or not acting? No. He just can't. He just won't. Dumb and irritating.So, overall while there are some interesting plot elements that made me generous in giving three stars rather than two overall I found the books to be kind of irritating and the main characters pathetic and depressing. I recognize that a good bit of this may be personal preference and if you are into rather pathetic characters who are stumbling through life trying to get by maybe you will find these stories appealing. If not, I'd give them a pass.

Welcome to the world of Clean - a Mindspace investigation novel written by Alex Hughes.If I had to judge this book on the world design alone, I would still rate it off the charts. The world is brand new and original and nothing like I have ever read before. The concept for the world revolves around an incident known as the Tech Wars (which we learn regrettably little about in this first book) where basically, the world was on the brink of destruction - any form of networked technology was literally killing people.Enter 'The Guild', a mysterious and menacing non-governmental fixture who regulates telepaths, pyrokinetics, telekinetics, teleporters, pre-cogs and I'm virtually certain dozens of other potentially harmful people with some seriously scary abilities. They put a stop to the Tech Wars by taking control of the world - and they did it in a very scary way - with mind control.All this, you can learn from the back cover of the book. I won't tell you any more than that, for fear of spoiling the story for you.What you can't get from the back cover of the book is into the mind of the main character - a nameless telepath with a very nasty drug habit.Because the story is told in such a tightly controlled first person, and no one actually addresses the main character by name, we don't actually find out his name until very late in the book. You'll never notice it when you're reading the book. In fact, it wasn't until I got to that revelatory point that I even realized I hadn't known it all along. But regardless of his lack of name, the character is brilliant on levels that I've rarely seen. He is dysfunctional to a degree of brokenness that actually makes the reader -feel- his addiction with him. There are several instances in the book where you'll find yourself going "No... please, don't do it.. don't give it all up for one more dose..."And you're not always going to be saved by those pleas.Alex Hughes has created a murder mystery thriller based around the concept that a man who is broken, addicted, disliked, and distrusted is put in a position where he desperately NEEDS for these people to trust him - but he is unreliable; and he's fallen off the wagon before so no one wants to listen. His 'partner' is a bull-headed female cop with a chip on her shoulder and every bit as much distrust for the man as everyone else. This isn't the book where the loyal partner goes into the bosses office and stands toe to toe with her Captain to defend the main character. She gets angry, she gets violent - and she's every bit as broken as he is; just for completely different reasons.And yet...The main character perseveres through all the distrust and at time outright hatred of the people around him in a desperate bid to stop a serial killer who's not only coming after him, but his partner as well. This is not a guy who's setting out to be a hero because he doesn't believe in himself enough to -be- a hero. What he does want desperately, is to stop this from happening to someone he cares for more than he'd like to admit.Throughout the book he shows everything from a pathetic and addicted nature, an irrational anger towards the people around him, a surprising show of integrity, a lack of willpower that will make you shake your head in despair for him - and at the end a strength of character and will brought on by desperation that make him into a magnificently human character.Don't get me wrong, I like the Harry Dresdens, the October Day (from Seanan McGuire's series), the John Taylors (from Simon R. Green's Nightside series). I read them religiously.But I can't find a single character in the genre with this level of depth and humanity to him. You'll love him, you'll hate him, you'll pity him, and at times you'll want to knock some sense in him. But while you're thinking all of those things, you'll keep reading - and when the book is done, you'll find yourself waiting with bated breath for the next Mindspace Investigation novel to reach the shelves.

Not my usual kind of book, hoped for more Sci-Fi, got more paranormal.It's about a disgraced telepath who works for the police, so no real surprise it's about a police investigation. The main characters are excellent, the issues the telepath has, coping with all the mental noise around him is well thought out plays a significant part in his personalityMy only issue with the book was it's just not my sort of story, others that enjoy the paranormal and/or police investigative stories will love it and rate it far higher than the 3* I gave it

Alex Hughes has a reader for life.

Sorry vorab für meine unstrukturierten "Two Cents".Dieser SciFi-Paranormal-Noir-Krimi gefällt mir besonders durch seine intensive Atmosphäre und das Gefühlsleben des Hauptdarstellers. Es ist eine ziemlich abgef***te Welt, in der sich der Telepath und Ex-Junkie durch's Leben schlägt. Ich hatte ständig Mitleid mit dem Kerl, konnte ihn aber auch nachvollziehen, auch wenn er sich - aus Leserperspektive - manchmal eher ungünstig verhält.Der Schreibstil ist etwas gewöhnungsbedürftig, passt aber gut zum Thema "Telepathie": die Sätze und Informationen sind nicht immer klar getrennt, fließen ineinander, so wie die Gedanken+Gefühle des Ich-Erzählers mit den Gedanken+Gefühlen der Leute um ihn herum. Telepathie ist somit als ein Talent wie auch als eine Belastung überzeugend dargestellt. Auch die Sucht nach der fiktiven Droge "Satin" (wohl ähnlich Heroin) kommt überzeugend rüber.Die Story wird dominiert durch die über allem schwebende Bedrohung der Vision (ist schon im Klappentext erwähnt, also darf ich das hier wohl auch sagen, ohne zu spoilern), sehr ominös, unausweichlich, der Kampf dagegen wirkt verzweifelt und zum Scheitern verurteilt. Der Fall des Serienmörders, pardon, mehrfachen Mörders tritt dagegen fast in den Hintergrund.Das Buch erinnert tatsächlich etwas an Blade Runner, wie auf dem Cover geschrieben steht ("A fun blend of China Town and Blade Runner" - China Town kenne ich nicht). Es hat auch etwas von Harry Dresden (von dessen Abenteuern ich ein Riesenfan bin), nämlich den vom Pech verfolgten, von Normalos unverstandenen Hauptcharakter, dessen taffe Cop-Partnerin. Der Humor und die flotte Action fehlt, dafür ist CLEAN ernsthafter, erwachsener.Zum Schluß noch: ziemlich cool finde ich, dass man den Namen des Protagonisten (fast) nicht erfährt. Ist mir gar nicht aufgefallen, passt einfach in die Perspektive der ersten Person.Ein vielversprechender Auftakt, Band Zwei habe ich soeben bestellt.

Der Icherzähler der Geschichte, ein Telepath mit Drogenproblemen, arbeitet seit seinem Rauswurf aus der Telepathengilde als Berater der Polizei. Ein Außenseiter, dem nicht viel Sympathie entgegengebracht wird. Doch seine hohe Trefferquote bei Verhören und sein gutes Verhältnis zu Detective Isabella Cherabino, einer äußerst erfolgreichen Ermittlerin, sorgen dafür, dass sein Job ihm vorerst sicher bleibt.So verbringt er seine Zeit meist im Verhörraum, bis er von Cherabino zu einem neuen Fall gerufen wird, einer Serie von Morden, die keine weitere Gemeinsamkeit aufzuweisen scheinen als die ungewöhnliche Art der Verletzungen, die die Opfer verbindet.Ein Fall, bei dem die Vergangenheit ihn einzuholen droht und nicht nur ihn selbst, sondern auch seine Partnerin in höchste Lebensgefahr bringt.Hughes gelingt mit ihrem „Mindspace“ - einer Art weiteren Raumebene, die nur von Telepathen wahrgenommen werden kann, und die nicht nur die aktuellen Gedanken von Menschen enthält, sondern auch ein Abbild dessen, was an einem Ort in der Vergangenheit gedacht, gefühlt und getan worden war - ein origineller Zugang zum Thema Telepathie.Darüber hinaus finden sich die üblichen sonstigen Spielarten von geistigen Kräften, die gerne im Zusammenhang mit Telepathen auftreten, wie etwa Telekineten und Teleporter etc. - in diesem Roman zusammengefasst unter der Bezeichnung „Ability“ - die allesamt der alleinigen Jurisdiktion der ominösen Telepathengilde unterworfen sind.Auch der Rahmen, in dem die Geschichte angesiedelt ist - ein Amerika der Zukunft, in dem „intelligente“ Technik strengsten Restriktionen unterliegt, seitdem die von Computern und vernetzten Bioimplantaten dominierte Welt Jahrzehnte zuvor in einem von Amok laufender Technik ausgelösten Blutbad, den sog. „Tech Wars“, halb vernichtet worden war, während für uns utopische Dinge, wie etwa Antigravitationsantrieb oder Stasefelder, zum täglichen Leben gehören – bietet einen ganz eigenen Reiz für die Ermittlungshandlung.Die Charaktere hingegen sind zwar sympathisch jedoch etwas stereotyp ausgefallen:Zum Einen der Protagonist: Der durch seine Drogensucht bei der Gilde in Ungnade gefallene Wunderknabe, der sich seither mit zweifelhaftem Erfolg bemüht, eine neues Leben aufzubauen, dabei aber noch immer nicht mit seiner Vergangenheit ins Reine gekommen ist. Er ist der klare Sympathieträger der Geschichte, dessen zusätzliche Fähigkeit, bruchstückhafte Zukunftsvisionen zu sehen, die immer dann auftreten, wenn er selbst in Gefahr schwebt, etwas allzu Deus ex machina ausfällt, während auch die Tatsache, dass er rein „zufällig“ zur Lösung eines Falles hinzugezogen wird, der direkt mit ihm selbst und seiner früheren Tätigkeit für die Telepathengilde in Zusammenhang steht, nicht völlig zu überzeugen vermag.Zum Anderen Cherabino, die schöne, hart arbeitende, toughe, überaus erfolgreiche Powerfrau mit dem schwarzen Gürtel in Karate und den „großen Brüsten“, die mit ihren eigenen traumatischen Erlebnissen und daraus resultierenden Bindungsängsten zu kämpfen hat. Auch bei ihr wäre etwas weniger Klischee sicher mehr gewesen, zumal es auch nicht so recht ins Bild passen will, dass sie als die eigentlich Vorgesetzte etwas unterzugehen droht.Die Handlung selbst ist durchaus spannend, wenn auch sehr geradlinig, mit ihrem ebenfalls klischeehaften Superschurken, was den Roman aber dennoch zu einem kurzweiligen Lese vergnügen macht. - Nicht der ganz große Wurf, aber gute Unterhaltung für einen verregneten Nachmittag, mit viel Potential für die Fortsetzung!

I thoroughly enjoyed this newish take on the old "telepathy is a pain" problem. It is generally well written and very well paced, but the drug issue that initially drives this tale becomes a bit stale, as does his constant shifting between self pity and self fulfillment. I will continue to follow the series but hope the protagonist breaks through to a new level of awareness and power. It seems too angry to be sustained however. Almost all the characters are over the top angry usually at the hero, mostly for very poor and hard to understand reasons. Once the author overcomes this tendency as I am sure she will, the series should take off.