The Quantum Connection by Travis S. Taylor

This book is the even more action packed sequel to Warp Speed.  While it is a sequel it stands alone quite well.  I actually read it first and was not confused at all.  The book picks different characters to focus on and at the beginning they do not even know about the crew from the first book.  The book is a fun read if you want a classic style science fiction story where the good guy wins, and the bad guys are left in the dust by the hero's mighty intellect and wise tactical or technological decisions.

This book's strength is also its weakness because the bad guys don't really have much of a chance despite having an initial advantage.  This is really a geek, techno-fantasy, superhero style story with some real science at its heart.

The book is the story of how Steven Montana(the hero) saves the world.  At the start of the book Steven is a gamer geek and college student studying computers when the warp war from the first book breaks out.  In the fighting his entire home town with everyone he knows is wiped out and he is told it was because of a meteor.  He slides into a spiral of depression and only begins to come back out of it when a chance encounter gets him a job working on reverse engineering a strange circuit that turns out to be a quantum supercomputer.  When a background check fails due to him having no-one to vouch for him he has a major relapse and heads into the desert after taking all of his "happy pills".  At this point the book takes a bit of a turn because he is abducted by aliens that have been experimenting on him for years and were the ultimate cause of his depression.  Because of the pills he took he is able to wake up from their sedation and take over the ship. The research ship turns out to be run by a quantum supercomputer, the very thing Steven was just studying.  Using the supercomputer and the nanotechnology on board the research vessel he enhances himself and a female fellow captive, and together they take off to save the world.  Soon they meet up with the crew from warp speed, and god help anything that threatens earth from that point on.

This book will appeal to classic science fiction, and comic book fans.  To be honest the writing reminds me of some of Heinlein's stories.  The action in the book never stops, and there is not a lot of time spent on introspection.  This book also has a little bit less explanation of the science behind whats going on than warp speed so it may not appeal to hard science fiction fans as much.

This book can be found at www.amazon.com as an e-book or in print.