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Noggin - book review

John Whaley is the author.  The book's premise as of its writing in 2014 constitutes sci fi.  Or is it?  Never know what the NSA is cooking.  But moving on to what mere mortals like us know, the idea that a dude whose body is dying of cancer has their head (which is functioning and healthy) chopped and frozen for few years in the hope of tying it to a healthy donor body in the future is a leap.

Think chop shop auto body except for humans.  A virtual junkyard where our body parts are available for all models aka races, colors, sexual preferences.  Lose a pancrea?  Hop into the 'Parts R Us' next to the McDonald's on 4th street and get one before lunch.  You don't want to semi digest something now do you?

The story revolves around a teenager who dies of cancer but just prior to this culminating event, the patient, his family and the doctor sign up for an experimental idea of cryo preserving his brain.  When five years later a healthy body (for a person that dies of brain cancer) comes along the two parts are married and Travis is re-born.  Fully operational but a few inches taller.  The new body is of a dude with a six pack and neck scar where he is sown back (and front).

Another movie (or many movies) recently called Self Less had a similar theme except here the brain or thinking portion of the new person was downloaded into someone with another (face and) body.  So now no one recognized him.

This book is about a person as people know him showing up after being missing / considered dead (and cremated) for five years.  With some hilarity that results from the protagonist getting accustomed to his new body parts to his interaction with folks that are weirded out, the rebirth for him is nothing more than a nap that he took and woke up.

To him the world is different from bigger, flatter or curved TV screens to people much older than he had left them.  Their are some romantic twists that while logical for a teenager growing up in middle America (story I think is based in some part of Kansas) make the plot lose muster.

Good pace in the first half the book becomes sort of boring toward the end simply due to lack of novelty.

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