Book Tour & Review: "Brainwalker"

Description

Brainwalker
by Robyn Mundell & Stephan Lacast
Genre: YA Scifi/Fantasy
Release Date: October 1st 2016
Dualmind Publishing

Summary from Goodreads:

Fourteen year-old Bernard is full of out of the box ideas—ideas that nobody appreciates. Not his ultra-rational father, not his classmates, and definitely not his teacher, who’s fed up waiting for Bernard’s overdue science project. You’d think with a hotshot quantum physicist for a dad, the assignment would be easy as “pi”, but with his relationship with his father on rocky ground, Bernard is under more pressure than a helium atom.

And Bernard’s impulse control flies out the window when he’s stressed. So instead of turning in his project, he moons the class and gets suspended. Now his dad’s got no choice but to bring him to his work. At the Atom Smasher. It’s the chance of a lifetime for Bernard, who knows smashing atoms at the speed of light can—theoretically—make wormholes. How about that for the most mind-bending science project ever? But when he sneaks into the particle accelerator and someone hits the power button, Bernard ends up in the last place he’d ever want to be.

Inside his father’s brain.

And it’s nothing like the spongy grey mass Bernard studied at school. It’s a galaxy, infinite and alive. Like, people live there. A mysterious civilization on the brink of extinction, as unaware of their host as he is of them. But there’s zero time to process this. Bernard’s about to be caught up in an epic war between the two sides of his dad’s brain over their most precious resource:

Mental Energy.

With his father’s life at stake, Bernard must go up against the tyrannical left side of his father’s brain to save the dying, creative right side. But how the heck is he supposed to do that when he’s just a hopelessly right-brained kid himself?

http://brainwalker.net/

Buy Links: Amazon Kindle | Amazon Paperback

 

About the Authors

Robyn Mundell is an award winning playwright. A graduate of New York University, she performed in dozens of plays in New York and was part of David Mamet’s Atlantic Theater Company. She studied with such theater legends as Uta Hagen, Lee Strasberg, and Stella Adler.

Robyn wrote and performed in several of her own plays including Pieces of O and Traveling Bowls of Soup, produced by Pulitzer-prize winner Beth Henley. Traveling Bowls of Soup opened at the Met theater to rave reviews and received several Drama-Logue awards. Robyn has since been selling original screenplays and TV pilots to major film companies and networks. She is the daughter of Canadian Nobel laureate Robert A. Mundell, and is married to actor-playwright Raymond J. Barry. Together, they have four children.

French-Born Stephan Lacast likes to think of himself as a geek, which depending on your dictionary means either “knowledgeable about computers”, or “boring social misfit.” At the age of twelve his idea of fun was building computers and programming, and by fifteen he was a contributor to a computer magazine. A graduate of Paris-Dauphine University, he holds a Bachelor in Economics, a Master in Business Administration, and a Master of Advanced Studies in Information Systems.

After teaching at Dauphine University, Stephan went on to work as a consultant and engineer for one of the top ten Information Technology services companies in Europe, before deciding to leave Paris and move to the United States.

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Review

Bernard is the son of two scientists, and understandably, he Loves science. Except, now that his mother is gone, no one appreciates his weird ideas. Besides, he has trouble controlling his impulses. Which is how he ends up inside the “Atom Smasher” at his father’s workplace, Bernard’s mind reduced to atoms and transported inside his father’s brain—a place that appears to contain a world of its own, with people, energia, and cities ready to go to war. So Bernard teams up with his new friends to stop the oncoming war, restore the balance of Energia, and save his father’s life.

Brainwalker, created by Robyn Mundell and Stephan Lacast, will teach you about the brain in a way you never imagined. Bernard is transported inside his father’s brain, and although it contains its own world, it is still his father’s brain. Pretty much everything inside the Brain world has a parallel to the different organs and cells in the real brain; the people living in the right brain are more intuitive and creative while those in the left brain are more logical and organized. Kind of like Bernard and his father, where Bernard is more right-brained and his father is more left-brained. And like the two different sides of the brain and the two nations corresponding to them, Bernard and his father must learn to get along and appreciate both the right and left sides of their brains and each other. I am amazed at the creativity of these authors to make this allegory, providing both a great theme with many layers and a gorgeously creative world that teaches the reader a few biology lessons along with everything else. I truly haven’t read anything quite like it before. Also, to help our imaginations along, the authors included a few images of Bernard’s experiences in the Brainiverse.

I recommend this book to those who enjoy Middlegrade and YA Fantasy.

I received a free copy of this book via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.