Review: Unlimited: A Novel by Davis Bunn

Simon Orwell is a brilliant student whose life has taken a series of wrong turns. At the point of giving up on his dreams, he gets a call from an old professor who has discovered a breakthrough in a device that would create unlimited energy, and he needs Simon's help.

But once he crosses the border, nothing goes as the young man planned. The professor has been killed and Simon is assaulted and nearly killed by members of a powerful drug cartel.

Now he must take refuge in the only place that will help him, a local orphanage. There, Simon meets Harold Finch, the orphanage proprietor who walked away from a lucrative career with NASA and consulting Fortune 500 companies to serve a higher cause.

With Harold's help, Simon sets out on a quest to uncover who killed the professor and why. In due time, he will discover secrets to both the worldchanging device and his own unlimited potential.

This is the first novel that I've read from Davis Bunn and unfortunately, as excited as I was to read this, it just didn't really work for me. Man, I read the first few chapters and I was really enjoying getting to know the characters, the action was awesome and the storyline was great. But then it just fizzled out. 

I'm not totally for sure where it actually went wrong. I really connected with the main character, Simon. I thought that he was intriguing and I couldn't wait to get to know him more. But then he became one of those characters that was great at everything and knew everything ABOUT everything and it became tiresome. Even with the intrigue about his past, I was just bored with him. It almost felt like a cop out ... having the character perfect except for one thing in his past. I don't want to read about a perfect person ... I want someone who is flawed and struggling and that is what I thought that Unlimited had in store for me because of the beginning of the novel.

I don't know. Maybe I'm just sensitive to that because the constant preaching. Well, it wasn't preaching but it was too much. I know that this is a Christian Fiction novel. But this felt like it was being force-fed to the reader. If I wanted to read the Bible, I would have picked it up instead of this book. I found myself rolling my eyes at the, "What God has in store" comments that happened frequently. Maybe I'm not the Christian that this book was made for. I don't know that I could ever really enjoy a book that made me question my faith - i.e. Am I not Christian enough because I find this annoying?!? All I know is, after I was about halfway through the book, I just kept picturing Elaine from Seinfeld and the whole Jesus fish thing.

I wish that the excitement hadn't tapered off. I think it would have kept my attention more if the action had kept at the same pace it was in the beginning. I'm obviously in the minority with this one because there are only a hand-full of negative ratings, most everyone loves it so if you are on the fence, go ahead and get it ... statistically speaking, you'll probably like it. Good luck!

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