Readers new to Mike Murphey’s satirical Physics, Lust, and Greed series have a lot to get used to very quickly in QUANTUM CONSEQUENCES. The story starts like a relatively down-to-earth thriller, with couple Marshall and Marta discovering their elderly friend Cecil dead aboard his boat. Despite Cecil’s advanced age, the two believe it to be murder—and they believe they know the man involved. From there, the action flips quickly to a fascist future in which time travel is real and parallel dimensions are named after classic TV series.

However, readers of the previous four books will already know that Marshall and Marta are among a group of time travelers, of a sort. In Murphey’s setting, time travel is actually interdimensional travel. Each dimension is interconnected in such a way that events closely mirror each other across them. Thus, time travelers are actually transporting their consciousness to a point in another dimension’s past, sharing a body with their alternate self. It’s a dangerous game, as indicated by one agent still sharing a body with multiple of her alternate selves. But to find Cecil’s killer, it’s worth the risk. Along the way, readers will meet conspiracy theorist robots, sentient bears, and shapeshifting interplanar beings. What starts as a manhunt for a murderer branches off into a political caper that could doom the United States, a battle with Amazon (the company), and a far-reaching plan to take humanity to the next stage of evolution.

QUANTUM CONSEQUENCES is full of tonal dissonance that will be a deal-breaker for some readers but a deal-maker for others. For example, serious discussions about the fate of young Baptiste, whose mother’s boyfriend is the prime suspect in Cecil’s murder, give way to the same Baptiste disguising himself as Fidel Castro. As another example, interdimensional discussions about Marshall’s fate are discussed by people presenting as Atticus Finch and Jessica Rabbit. But this tonal dissonance is clearly aware and deliberate, and is presented early enough that readers will know what they’re in for and whether it’s their style.

The most satisfying part of the book, however, is how neatly all the loose ends tuck in. It would be a disservice to go into too much detail here, as it’s worth the reader’s time to discover for themselves how the story’s many seemingly disparate storylines fit together by the end. Suffice to say, everything from the time travel to the political plots to Cecil’s death—and even Marshall’s mysterious disappearing appendectomy scar—are all addressed and fit together by the end.

QUANTUM CONSEQUENCES will not be everyone’s cup of tea; some will find parts of it too serious, while others may find the rest of it not serious enough. However, fans of science fiction in need of an alternative to traditional time travel plots—as well as readers craving something that doesn’t take itself too seriously—will enjoy this new take on the genre.

Readers new to Mike Murphey’s series would do best to read the first four novels first, but the worldbuilding and clever time travel mechanics in QUANTUM CONSEQUENCE are engaging enough on their own to make the unfamiliar circumstances worth navigating.

~Kara Dennison for IndieReader