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While it is possible for economies to grow based on abundant land or natural resources, more often...
The Evolution of the Juvenile Court: Race, Politics, and the Criminalizing of Juvenile Justice
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A major statement on the juvenile justice system by one of America's leading experts The juvenile...
Music Festivals in the UK: Beyond the Carnivalesque
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The popular music festival market has developed and expanded over the past twenty years to become a...
The Disney Musical on Stage and Screen: Critical Approaches from 'Snow White' to 'Frozen'
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The Disney Musical: Critical Approaches on Stage and Screen is the first critical treatment of the...
Top of the Pops: 50th Anniversary
Patrick Humphries and Steve Blacknell
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The Japanese Mafia: Yakuza, Law, and the State
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The Japanese mafia - known collectively as yakuza - has had a considerable influence on Japanese...
Notebooks, Volume 1, 1998-99: Volume 1
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"For a long time, it was not clear if I would become a writer or an artist," says Anselm Kiefer,...
Difficult Men: From The Sopranos and The Wire to Mad Men and Breaking Bad
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In the late 1990s and early 2000s, a wave of TV shows, first on premium cable channels like HBO and...
The Vanishing Half
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'The Vanishing Half is an utterly mesmerising novel. It seduces with its literary flair, surprises...
David McK (3623 KP) rated Quantum Leap: Carny Knowledge in Books
Jul 23, 2023
Recently, I've started watching the Paramount+ revival of one of my favourite 'tweenage' years shows.
I'm not yet - as of the time of writing - sold on it.
Having watched an episode or two, I thought I would revisit the original, albeit in literary rather than audiovisual form - I know that, in the past, I had read Quantum Leap 00: Too Close for Comfort and Knights of the Morningstar, but I had never read this one. When I cam across it, therefore, I thought I would give it a go.
I have to say, also, that - unfortunately - I just wasn't really all that impressed by it. I don't know whether that's because this was #1 in the book series, or because of the subject matter - being from the UK, carnivals (and the people who run them, known as Carnies (or so I've heard) ) aren't really all that much of a thing here! Nor do I particularly like roller-coasters ...
In this, Sam finds himself in the body of one such 1950 Carnie, a childhood polio survivor, who seems to have visions of the future in which people die after a roller-coaster derails on its maiden run, with all the hopes and dreams of the Carnival workers pinned on that roller coaster. This, I found, was bit slow in starting, although it did pick up towards the end! There's also segments in the (1990s!) future, showing what is missing from the revival in the Waiting Room, and explains a bit better than that revival does why Al is Sam's hologram as opposed to Addison being Ben's.
Worth a read for nostalgia factor, maybe.