On the Tenth Day of Christmas... Jumper -- Steven Gould
On the Tenth Day of Christmas, my true love gave to me ten lords-a-leaping...
Despite the fact that both Rachel Bilson and Michael Rooker are in it, I never did see the movie based on this book. Because, you know: Hayden Christiansen.
Anyway, judging by the half-trailers-worth of footage I've seen of said footage, it looks like the filmmakers must have amped up the action part of the storyline. (And maybe added a character? Because, as is, there's no one in the book for Jamie Bell to play.) The first three-quarters of Jumper pretty much consist of Davy dealing with the practical aspects of being a seventeen-year-old runaway with the power of teleportation. It's only in the last hundred pages or so that the action-movie terrorist plot part of the story kicks in.
But let me back up!
After one too many times of being whipped with the buckle end of his drunken father's belt ("Not the buckle, dad! You promised!"), Davy Rice has had it. So he runs—well, accidentally teleports—away, is promptly almost raped by a gang of truckers ("Who brought the Vaseline?"), gets mugged, and ONLY THEN decides to try to work on his teleportation skillz.
He robs a bank, falls in love (but doesn't tell his ladyfriend about the whole jumping thing), tracks down his mother—who'd abandoned him with his abusive father six years previously—and builds a secret hideout... in what I assume is some sort of nature preserve-y place, but folks with superpowers aren't generally known for following the rules, so whatever. Anyway, one thing leads to another, and suddenly the NSA is very, very, VERY interested in him... which is not the sort of attention that he wants.
The storyline is very A to B to C, in that most readers will get from beginning to end without ever really being surprised by anything. OH. Except maybe by the fact that Davy cries more than Jack on Lost. Which is an unusual trait in a hero, regardless of gender, and also a somewhat annoying trait in a hero, also regardless of gender*. The dialogue—especially between Davy and Millie—was really stilted and unrealistically formal, and he gets a bit infodump-y and didactic with speeches along the lines of Here's A Mini-Lecture On Middle East Politics or Let Me Rant About The Ridiculousity Of American Gender Roles.
I enjoyed the first part of the book—the part where he figures out his limits and how to use his power intelligently—quite a lot more than the action-movie part of the book, because it really feels like Gould had mulled over the everyday possibilities of the power as well as the more superhero-esque stuff: the subtleties as well as the flash. That thoughtfulness is, hands down, the strongest aspect of the book.
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*And that, my friends, is a big part of why I didn't make it through the second season of Lost.
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Author page.
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Book source: ILLed through my library.