Book Review - The Madhouse Mambo by Richard Levesque

The Madhouse Mambo: A Dieselpunk Adventure by Richard Levesque
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I've read the entire series and I'm just about finished with this book. It did not disappoint as usual.

Just to be a little nit-picky, I found I was losing track of the characters by name. More than once I had to search on a name (I love that Kindle feature) to be reminded when the person showed up and who they were. But that may be more an issue of my aging brain.

To nitty-gritty, Jed is not as in control as he usually is when hopping between parallel universes. No, that's not a spoiler if you'd been a good kid and read books 1-6 before reading this review of book 7. You would also know that the Jed we're following in this series hops into the body of another Jed in the other universe. The worst possible hop was into Jetpack Jed's body in a parallel world where the Nazis either won WWII or the entire history of that particular universe just led to the Nazis being in charge. Given there is a resistance movement, it's more likely that the Nazis did win some kind of war that put them in charge.

Jed (our Jed) finds his previous fiance hooked up with Jetpack. In his world, she had died. Jet is, of course, sympathetic to her. He can't tell her that in another world she had died when in her world she is married to a Jed and has two kids.

Alliances and sympathies are different in this alternate world. Our Jed has to be fast on his feet to grab the universe-hopping machinery from Jetpack while avoiding being picked up by the Nazis. He has to take the technology from the Nazi world so they don't get hold of it and make a horrendous mess across multiple universes. Thank goodness for rebels even if they are a pack of kids.

Four and 3/4 stars just because there's rarely anything perfect in this world or any other.

Note: I got a pre-publication copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. I do my best to be truthful in reviewing each book. However, the consistency across seven books is an achievement that must be taken into account when reviewing one of the books.

Go read the entire series. You won't be sorry.

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