A World Between by Robert Herzog is a novel for physicists and philosophers - or anyone else who enjoys physics, philosophy, fractal geometry, quantum physics, and politics.

A World Between has a great opening hook that will pull you in immediately: "Parts of the world were disappearing; for a while nobody noticed." But, as the sections of missing world increase, people start to notice and report what they are seeing. The reports are taken by, say the police, but are not taken seriously. Once the right people, at the U.N., notice, then experts are pulled in to quietly figure out why the voids are happening. Susan, a U.N. relief worker who recently returned to the USA after observing the phenomena in Africa, is enlisted to interview physicists who might be able to study the problem and find an answer.

This seems like it would be an exciting science fiction novel. It isn't. If you are expecting a thrill a minute, nail biting sci-fi novel with a complicated plot as parts of the world are disappearing - you will be disappointed. I was expecting this and was disappointed. Once I let go of my preconceived expectations, there is a very subtle beauty in the exploration of consciousness, quantum mechanics, politics, energy, wave energy, etc. etc. There is also an in-depth descriptions of every little detail on activities, memories, and thoughts.

There are parts of A World Between that will likely be appreciated more by those who share the same interests as Herzog in all the above. This is highly recommended for you. Those of us who were anticipating a bit more sci-fi action will just have to be disappointed.

Disclosure: My Kindle edition was courtesy of Story Plant for review purposes.

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This sci fi novel is based on a really interesting idea buried in runaway detail. Dense sentence structure and pages of incidental fact combine with long musings on philosophy, quantum physics and fractal theory, altogether providing a frustrating story which takes forever to get anywhere.

Several small areas around the world, mostly wild and sparsely inhabited, are found to have disappeared. The few who witness this are not believed or have no one to tell. One spot, however, is in a popular New York City beach area and is several hundred feet long. (More about this later). When a few strands of the story make their way to the US government, the problem is dumped on the UN, where a young employee who has witnessed the phenomenon in Africa is called on to find a physicist to find a solution. The fellow she enlists is somewhat out of the mainstream, and she sets him up in a lab in a dilapidated apartment house near the UN. She, the scientist and a scientist friend of his move in and begin work. I'm not exactly sure why she has to live there, but she does. So far so good - except this takes about a quarter of the book, interspersed with long back stories, run-on philosophizing and theorizing, and very awkward breaks in the story line, which jumps ahead now and then with no sense of time having passed. Other scientists get distantly involved, no one agrees on what the phenomenon is, and the only original thinking is being done in that apartment. The scientist and the UN employee fall in love. They try experiments, they make leaps of thought. Things slowly move along until a disaster at the beach (no spoilers), at which point even the long-suffering reader starts to wonder WTF? Oddly, though, this bizarre ongoing "nothing" at a New York City beach raises little interest from the public and none from the press. Anyhow, the scientists keeps getting closer to solving the "why" and possibly the "how to fix", and at this point the reader really does need to stick around because it is, after all, a rather interesting problem.

My suggestion to anyone other than physics majors is to read the "action" parts, browse the physics as necessary to get an understanding of what's being considered, skim the philosophizing, and skip some of the back stories if you find them beside the point. That's how I managed to finish the book, and it worked very well. I will say the end was not what I expected, and I can't tell yet how I feel about it, but it was equally dense and somewhat indecipherable.

(Read courtesy of Netgalley.com) ( )