Once upon a time during my high school days (and a little beyond) I read Christopher Pike books. I read a lot of them. I started with one called Chain Letter.
These first books could all be categorized as teen whodunit murder mystery novels. Conflict and relationships were all hormone filled teenage fair. At that point I wasn’t much of a reader, so at the very least I was reading.
Thing is the subject matter of the books changed. I attribute it to the popularity of R. L. Stine’s monster books. All of Pike’s books began to take on supernatural bents. He even wrote a sequel to Chain Letter, turning a normal mystery into a twisted zombie romp. I’m a big fan of sci-fi fantasy, but honestly my favorites of his were the straight up mystery books. No monsters or magic please.
My bestest friend Becky was an avid reader at the time and still is. Her taste in books was a little more evolved than mine. I lent her one of Pike’s books, involving a ghost solving her one murder or something. I think she read the whole thing, but even if she didn’t it was fairly evident that she thought it was laughable.
I now know what she was thinking. The TACHYON WEB is Pike’s foray into science fiction, but is really the same old teenage fair. No murder mystery, more mis-adventure. The plot was predictable in every possible way. Plot holes abound, and far too many things worked out a tad too perfectly.
I actually skimmed most of the book, and missed out on nothing. I enjoyed reading Pike again if only for nostalgia, but without the murder mystery the story seemed pointless. I can’t recommend this book to anyone, but I did enjoy it for my own reasons.
Time to move on to something else.
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