QUANTUM CONSEQUENCE: Physics Lust and Greed Series Book 5 by Mike Murphey – Time Travel, Action & Adventure, Satire

Quantum Consequences, the fifth book in the Physics, Lust, and Greed Series by Mike Murphy, mixes conflicts from the past, present, and future as a group of time travelers clash over the fate of multiple worlds.

Marta and Marshall have to protect Baptiste, a child living under the rule of his mother’s abusive boyfriend, Ignace Aguillard. When their friend Cecil is murdered, Baptiste inherits his money and stake in a secret governmental facility beneath the Arizona desert, the Historical Research Initiative Complex. To keep that money out of Aguillard’s hands and confirm whether Aguillard truly killed Cecil, Marta and Marshall take Baptiste to the HRI, revealing its true nature as the hub of interdimensional time travel.

Meanwhile, a team of assassins and former HRI personnel, Gillis, Lexi, and Elvin, are instructed by a future version of Lexi to kill John Dexter– Lexi’s bitter ex and future higher-up in the dystopian Christian Fundamentalist States of America. They break into the HRI, now seemingly abandoned, to figure out whether they should take the job.

But the two groups run into much greater trouble than just each other.

A paramilitary squad under the employ of Amazon, a set of AI with delusions of grandeur, and even the metaphysical custodians of the quantum corridor upon which time travel trespasses try to flex their will over the HRI. All the while, an even more mysterious force orchestrates murder and corporate-political schemes, working in the shadows of the future.

True to its name, Quantum Consequences brings together a menagerie of storylines from earlier in the series, as the characters’ time-traveling work catches up to them. This complex story is skillfully wrangled as each action echoes onward to cause problems further down the line. Marshall suffers the mistakes of cosmic bureaucracy that leave him with a body from another universe, Marta’s alternate self flees from the authorities, and John Dexter tries to guide his past self to escape from mob ties and secure his political power in the future.

This story shares its infinite universes through engaging characters and a strong sense of humor.

Even as they reckon with the power to change the past, these characters remember their human ties, joking with, protecting, and loving the people who connect them to the world. Although time travel wipes away much of their memories, enough remains for them to slowly build a sense of the greater powers at play.

This use of time travel allows author Murphey to create moments of great tension, but also hilarious coincidences and well-executed dramatic irony. The story twists in wonderful and unexpected ways as different character perspectives show readers entirely new angles on events that seemed simple at first.

Quantum Consequences will draw readers in with grounded conflicts that get to the heart of characters like Marshall, Marta, and Baptiste, then expand to otherworldly concerns with entire universes at stake, and ultimately return to see these characters confront the issues weighing on them.

An excellent mix of satire, humor, and drama breathes life into this sci-fi adventure.

Tongue-in-cheek political commentary connects the events of this strange future to those of our modern day, and though Quantum Consequences doesn’t shy away from dark subject matter in its conflicts, running jokes and ridiculous situations keep the tone light throughout.

While this comedic tone is occasionally strained by the contrast with cruel villains, it holds up very well throughout the finale. As disparate conflicts come crashing together deep in the HRI, flashes of action and vital decisions shape an ever more intense story for this series.