Tabula Rasa

Tabula Rasa by Kristen Lippert-Martin
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Wow. Just, wow. What a rush.

This book starts off with a bang and never lets up. It is a roller coaster ride that twists and turns and finally deposits you in a place you didn't expect.

Tabula Rasa means "a mind not yet affected by experiences." It is a fitting title. In this story, we meet Sarah as she's undergoing brain surgery. It is creepy and difficult not to feel the terrifying loss of control right along with her. She is a patient in a hospital, undergoing treatment which will enable her to rejoin society. The goal of the treatment is to erase memories, to give her a new start, a blank slate.

Turns out Sarah is also known as Angel, a nickname her mother gave her after finding her atop a tall building. Angel likes to climb, to be up high. And yet she has no memory of being up high, only the feelings that it evokes. This is true for several things she encounters through the course of the story - emotions associated with the thing, but no memory of the thing itself. At her foundation, Sarah doesn't even really know who she is.

Things start going awry when Angel gets back to her room. When she starts to hear things like explosions and gunfire, she finds that someone has provided a means for her escape. She takes it, and the action doesn't stop from then on. In fact, the plot is non-stop action, taking only a moment here and there for one character to sleep or recover from injury while another character works.

The characters here are believable and diverse. Angel as a protagonist is nicely balanced. She isn't drop-dead gorgeous, she's a bald hospital patient with metal clips in her head. She's compassionate but not to the point of stupidity or senseless martyrdom. She is resourceful without being a genius. And as things unfold, she gets angrier and angrier with good reason.

Pierce, whose name turns out to be Thomas, is a worthy companion. He is a no-nonsense hacker. Whether or not he's a genius is never really clear, but what is clear is that he's really smart. He errs on the side of caution but doesn't hold Angel back. Rather, he just steers her in the right direction. The two make a formidable team.

The secondary characters are interesting enough. Hodges makes a passable villain. But the real villain is the mystery and who's behind all the soldiers and guns. Other hospital patients are introduced with varying side effects of their treatments. It makes for a pretty crazy cast.

All this is set against a backdrop of intrigue, lots of things blowing up and being crushed and falling from great heights and being washed away. In a blizzard. It was hard not to shiver as I read this.

The plot is intricate but not difficult to follow. It unfolds amid all the action and things make sense in a timely fashion. There is the slightest hint of a romance, just a dash to make things interesting. And the witty dialogue between Angel and Thomas lightens things up and made me smile.

All in all, this was a page turner. I really couldn't put it down. It would make a terrific action movie. I'm rounding this one up from 4.5 stars.

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