The novels

systemcat

Project QL Intern
Yesterday I made a bet while surfing that Quantum Leap has had novels and it turns out the bet was right. Only knew about the short lived comic book series till that. What do you guys think of the novels? I think I read that there are 18 books to the series.
 
QL Novels

I think I have them all, and personally find them a mixed bag.

Some of them are really good, well written stories, true to character and a joy to read.

There are others however which make me think "er, what series were YOU watching???" and are a great disappointment. A couple should never have made it to the franchise IMHO, and I'd much rather have a story by one of our tremendous VS writers, or someone who writes QL fanfic over at fanfic.net.
At least fans bother to get the characters right.

Others may disagree with me of course, which they have every right to.
 
I think that's a very good summation of the novels. There are some that I greatly enjoyed and got the characters dead on and others...well, I think those authors might have wanted to sit down and watch some QL and if they did watch it, they should have been forced to pay attention because I just don't think they watched the same series that I did.
 
I have read about half of them I have to say, and I must say I enjoy them. The writers are very good with the tasks that they set Sam. I love seeing Sam in new leaps that weren't in the show. There are a few that I wish were episodes they were so good. One of them is Independence. I would love to see Scott double as Samuel in the waiting room since he and his great many times grandson Sam(the leaper we know and love) look so much alike.

The only things I have a problem with are that some of the writers take the charactors out of context and I don't agree (and niether does the show completely) with the whole Sam's Soul leaping. I agree with Julia that some of those authors ovbiously paid poor attention to the show if they even watched it at all. Plus some of them needed to communicate with eachother before publishing because some facts don't agree with each other. For example in Mirror's Edge it says that Beaks has a son but in The Wall it says her sister's kids are all she has. Perhaps there is a meaning behind it that we are not told of but *shrug*. Nonetheless the stories are always something interesting. I wish there were more novels then there are. So if you are looking to decide whether or not to read some, than I would suggest you totally give one or two a try. :)
 
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So if you are looking to decide whether or not to read some, than I would suggest you totally give one or two a try.

I am interested the only thing is I have so many books I want to read right now and I have so little time for them ...:cry
There's another reason I wanted to know what people thought of the books but if I stated it in here an admin. or mod. would kill:blackeye me.
 
Why would an admin or mod kill you?
I know what you mean though I have books that I bought ages ago that I still have not gotten around to reading. Actually the QL books take some of the blame for that ;)
 
Why would an admin or mod kill you?


Setup an online DVD & book store else where on the net, now I won't tell it's name or any thing cause I don't want to be called a spammer ( why they'd kill me ). But it's loaded down with sci fi media and for the QL books I wanted to know which books people liked so the store would carry the right ones. I read such a bad review for one that it didn't get in.
 
Hope you guys don't mind my stepping into the discussion - I wrote Mirror's Edge and Obsessions, and read all the other books in the series. Like all of you, I have definite preferences - thought some of the books were excellent and others were a waste of time.

As to the whole idea of "What show were YOU watching?" - I believe very strongly that it's a matter of perspective. We all come from different backgrounds and experiences, have different likes and dislikes, and our way of approaching a story will likely be different from other people's. I had (and still have) a specific "take" on Sam and Al as people that lots of folks don't agree with, and in some instances take violent exception to. (A couple of the people who posted on Amazon.com basically removed my kidneys and handed them to me.) I don't think anyone's take on the story or the characters is "wrong" or "right" because it's very personal. For instance, there's a HUGE slash community in QL. Some of us don't like that take on the story and some love it to death.

Systemcat, I don't think you should take one person's review of a book as the deciding factor on whether or not to offer a particular book in an online store. As I said, it's one very personal opinion. When I'm trying to decide whether to go see a movie, I check out RottenTomatoes.com, because they compile ALL the reviews and determine a rating from the total. Deciding whether or not to sell something based on one opinion is, I think, horribly unfair to both the author and the QL community.

Our webmaster Brian is unlikely to kill anybody for discussing their opinion of the books. As long as everyone's polite, you should feel free to express what you think.

That said - I loved Pulitzer. Thought Independence was "meh." And of course, I think I did a reasonably good job with my own books, although I got bogged down in the ending - ran out of time and was unable to come up with a tighter wrapup that answered all the lingering questions.

Sam Beckett Fan, the authors were allowed completely free rein with their stories. We didn't have to worry about what another author had established in a previous book. I was told only to spell "Gooshie" with two O's. The publisher's only real rule was, Sam couldn't go home (and stay there). I wouldn't have wanted to fall into line with all the previous books, because I felt some of the other authors got things wrong.
 
Hmm interesting point about RottenTomatoes.com, I use that site to find out if a movie or show I want is on DVD yet. Some times I just go there to see what other people think of movies I like and half the time people write reviews stating they hated those films. So reading reviews others have made isn't as good an idea as I thought. For most TV shows to books I only gave the selection of three, QL was one of those. Shows with more popularly got more. The books for QL I listed are: A to Z, Mirror's Edge & Song and Dance. There's a reason why I read that one review. When I typed in the search for QL most of the books that turned up were on quantum physics and some books had no picture of their cover to go with them so I had to check if they were QL or not.
 
As far as movie reviews go, I meant the professional reviews, not the fan/user/blogger type. A lot of the fan reviews seem to me to be trolls, or people venting their spleen for one reason or another.
 
Oh I understand Systmecat you didn't want to mention an online store, I thought you were saying they'd kill you for stating that you were deciding whether to read any or not.

CarolD: Thank for the explination I guess that makes sense. Actually you are by far my fav author, I read both your books (obbessions with a little push from my BFF) and both were great. In fact she and I have our own little QL world that we write about and some of the ideas in Mirror's Edge I went on AIM and told her, "OMG, we are so copying some of our ideas from this book!"

Meeting you here, I know why now. We seem to have a lot of the same opinions. I remember in one of your discussion threads you made a post about your opinion on Sammy Jo and the whole Sam having a daughter from a leap thing and when I read it my jaw dropped, you were taking the words right out of my mouth.

Now I loved the other books written by authors other than you as well, some of my favorites were Oddessy, Independence(up there at the top of my list along with Mirror's Edge), and Song and Dance.

Independence
I'd say was one of the best written and it might be because it was written by a male author and Sam after all is a male charactor. But I also thought that the story was well thought out and the fact the that past charactors and the present charactors were so alike was very clever and insightful. I may have mentioned in my last post that I would have liked this one to be an episode, I am interested in seeing Scott double as the Samuel in the waiting room :)

There are a few I am interested in that I have not had the chance to rad yet. My BFF talked me into trying Forknowledge the same way she talked me into Obessions but I have to get her to lend it to me. And Heat Wave but it never came when I sent for it on Amazon so I had to get a refund. I hope to read them soon however.

Systemcat, I don't think you should take one person's review of a book as the deciding factor on whether or not to offer a particular book in an online store. As I said, it's one very personal opinion. When I'm trying to decide whether to go see a movie, I check out RottenTomatoes.com, because they compile ALL the reviews and determine a rating from the total. Deciding whether or not to sell something based on one opinion is, I think, horribly unfair to both the author and the QL community.

I agree I am not sure this is the best way to decide whether or not to sell QL books in your store. We are all QL fans here so obvously we are all going to say yes or go for it, but there are people beyond here that might want to check out your store, and have an opinion as well. So getting idividual opinions and from only one group of people at that is kind of unfair. Try Googling Quantum leap Novels or something and maybe they have websites with reviews like Rottentomatos like Carol said opinions that are all grouped together as one to form a total rating. Or just from someone professional.
 
Thanks for the kind words, Sam Beckett Fan! I appreciate that.

I did do one other QL novel, A Fork in the Road, which is online thanks to my fellow committee member Emma. It and a lot of my other QL fanfic can be found here:
http://quantumleap-fanfiction.manusamerica.co.uk/index.htm

I haven't gotten any feedback from Fork in the Road for quite a while, so if anybody here on the Forum reads it, do let me know what you thought.
 
No problem Carol and I will check out your Fork in the Road sometime. I actually and working on a real good fic of my own that I hope to audition for the VS. Although I haven't had much time to work on it lately as I have had school work. But this week is my last and I am free for the summer, so hopfully I will get to work on it again. But I could use some feedback along the way so I might ask a choice person here to look at it. ;)
 
Thanks Al :D, the shop is part of that From the Ashes site I've talked about here. It's the second to last area for additions to that site. The last area in the site will be for archives for the spotlight area. Example the moment another series gets put in the spotlight the info on QR the radio files won't go away it will just be in another area for people to read up on it. The shop which is really two shops: one for TV DVDs and the other for mainly TV based books, is named From the Ashes Amazon. ( Amazon.com gave me the shops ). They're very much out of order right now about how series books and movies are listed. I think this can be fixed and I'm going to the moment I can. I tried to fill the shops with what I thought people who use FTA would like. A little of it's listing is meant to help fan fic writers. That's how QL: A to Z made it in, figured a book like that might be useful in that sense. The biggest bummer on adding or should I say not adding QL books to the shop was the lack of cover pictures when picking my stock. I'll add more QL based books if people are interested. But please remember this shop in meant to be for many kinds of sci fi & fantasy fans. That's why the list goes all over the place, I know there's a few well known series missing but those are ones I have yet to see fan fic on. Back to adding QL books into the shop, each shop can only hold 54 items. So this means replacing some thing that's already there. ( I should have said that earlier ).

CarolD, I was wondering since you wrote one of the books in the store. Would you mind talking about Mirror's Edge in my forum? The 26th Century forum doubles as the From the Ashes forum. I think you can guess why I'm asking this.


If people would like ( and I'd love to do this ) I'll post a link to the From the Ashes Amazon page for you guys to look at and tell me what you think.
 
CarolD said:
Hope you guys don't mind my stepping into the discussion - I wrote Mirror's Edge and Obsessions, and read all the other books in the series.

I just finished reading Mirror's Edge - Great job, I enjoyed it enormously, especially having post-"Leap Home pt II" Tom as a character. I did wonder why you hadn't used Sammy Jo instead of the guy character you invented (sorry, book not at hand and I don't remember his name). Read Obsessions a while back and enjoyed it, too.

I have collected and read all the USA books and one of the UK books, and have the other UK book on order. My real problem with the series, particularly the ones written by McConnell, are that she consistently says that Sam's soul is Leaping, and limits Sam's capabilities to what his "host" would be able to do - see especially "The Wall," although having him leap into a little girl was interesting.

My favorites have been Mirror's edge, Pulitzer, Angels Unaware, Odyssey and Double or Nothing.

{I just read another post above about you opinions about Sammy Jo - would you mind sharing them?}
 
CarolD said:
Thanks for the kind words, Sam Beckett Fan! I appreciate that.

I did do one other QL novel, A Fork in the Road, which is online thanks to my fellow committee member Emma. It and a lot of my other QL fanfic can be found here:
http://quantumleap-fanfiction.manusamerica.co.uk/index.htm

I haven't gotten any feedback from Fork in the Road for quite a while, so if anybody here on the Forum reads it, do let me know what you thought.
OMG! I just read this one last week. I was a little desperate for new fan fic, so I googled and landed on AFITR. That was amazing. I really loved it. The writing and characters were totally on, and I loved the feeling of being off-balance, wondering what the heck was going on.

People, make a cup of tea, click on that link, and settle in for a terrific (long!) read.
 
cookiemom6067 said:
I just finished reading Mirror's Edge - Great job, I enjoyed it enormously, especially having post-"Leap Home pt II" Tom as a character. I did wonder why you hadn't used Sammy Jo instead of the guy character you invented (sorry, book not at hand and I don't remember his name). Read Obsessions a while back and enjoyed it, too.

I have collected and read all the USA books and one of the UK books, and have the other UK book on order. My real problem with the series, particularly the ones written by McConnell, are that she consistently says that Sam's soul is Leaping, and limits Sam's capabilities to what his "host" would be able to do - see especially "The Wall," although having him leap into a little girl was interesting.

My favorites have been Mirror's edge, Pulitzer, Angels Unaware, Odyssey and Double or Nothing.

{I just read another post above about you opinions about Sammy Jo - would you mind sharing them?}

She doesn't use Sammy Jo because she doesn't like the idea of her.
but yeah Mirror's Edge had me on the edge of my seat especially near the beginneing when its estimated that he's there to die in Powell's place. I freaked out! and the fact that I had read that chapter after midnight didn't help hehe. One thing I didn't understand though and going back to what cookiemom said here about including Tom, I didn't get why Tom was so mean to Donna and wanting to blame her for Sam being lost in time.
 
Okay...

I was offended by the very idea of Sammy Jo. Sam doesn't remember Donna, which is fine; but the fact that the producers/writers plugged in this passionate love affair and had Sam come out of it with an illegitimate daughter just royally p'ed me off. And worse yet, she ended up working at the Project? Can you imagine (being Donna) working alongside your husband's illegitimate child, knowing he doesn't remember you? Ugh.

People do ask me occasionally why I included David - they seem to be bothered by the fact that I had ANY original characters in there at all. I tend to leave Tina out, too, because she offends me even more than Sammy Jo does. (I can't tolerate stupid women, or intelligent women who act stupid.)

Tom wasn't specifically mad at Donna; he was pretty much mad at everybody at the Project for not telling him the truth.

For those who want a "Sam goes home" story, A Fork in the Road is what you're looking for. I'm still very pleased with how it came out.
 
CarolD said:
I tend to leave Tina out, too, because she offends me even more than Sammy Jo does. (I can't tolerate stupid women, or intelligent women who act stupid.)

I'm sorry to hear that you don't like Tina. I don't think we know enough about her to know whether she's stupid or not, from the brief bit we see in The Leap Back. She does have a horrible voice, but I guess she can't help that. I admit, I was surprised and disappointed when I first saw her in that episode too. I thought that the Tina that Al picks up in the pilot was more his speed.

But there she was, and they stayed together for 4+ years. Al never left her--the relationship ended because the timeline changed. So I wondered what keeps them together, and I decided Tina must have something Al needs. Something makes the relationship work for both of them. She may not be educated, but I think she must have considerable street smarts and wisdom to keep Al for 4 years. A bimbo with big cassavas wouldn't be enough to hold his attention that long. He would move on. Or she would grow weary of his insane work schedule and divided attention and move on herself. But she stays.

So, anyway, I'll leave it to your imagination what Al sees in Tina. But I would approach it with the assumption that there must be something. I guess I persuaded myself to like her. Al does, so who am I to put her down? :)
 
Don't misunderstand me, Carol. I'm not offended by original characters. I understand your position on Sammy Jo, although I don't agree with you 100% - seems akin to blaming the illegitimate child for the affair.

I agree with you about Tina, as portrayed in the Leap Back. Saying (as most of the novels do) that she's brilliant and teh PhD that built Ziggy's hardware doesn't make her character any less grating.
 
CarolD said:
Okay...

I was offended by the very idea of Sammy Jo. Sam doesn't remember Donna, which is fine; but the fact that the producers/writers plugged in this passionate love affair and had Sam come out of it with an illegitimate daughter just royally p'ed me off. And worse yet, she ended up working at the Project? Can you imagine (being Donna) working alongside your husband's illegitimate child, knowing he doesn't remember you? Ugh.

People do ask me occasionally why I included David - they seem to be bothered by the fact that I had ANY original characters in there at all. I tend to leave Tina out, too, because she offends me even more than Sammy Jo does. (I can't tolerate stupid women, or intelligent women who act stupid.)

Tom wasn't specifically mad at Donna; he was pretty much mad at everybody at the Project for not telling him the truth.

For those who want a "Sam goes home" story, A Fork in the Road is what you're looking for. I'm still very pleased with how it came out.
Yeah the only person I dislike more than Sammy Jo is her mother the offender, Abigale. I thought she was very annoying, so I don't understand how Sam fell in love with her. I want to think that it was probably a lot to do with her situtation that made Sam love her. I could not have said it better myself Carol D. As for Tina, I like her but in my stories I also don't really include her except for maybe a mention of her because shes not really an important charactor so she doesn't much matter.
Spoiler Alert! (highlight to read)
I loved her in Oddessy though as a little kid. She was real cute and I loved hoe Sam was so sweet with her (partly because his host is her boyfriend). And Sam and Alls expression when they find out that 'Chrissi' is their Tina at the end is priceless. I think that author was really clever the way they had Tina in it like that, but hider that its her.
 
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Lets see, I like reading the novels becuase you can see the character in your own way. But I like the movie becuase you can see whats happening in a short amount of time minus the 1/2day for reading the book. =3