When I got The Planck Factor, I thought I was getting a thriller with a solid science base. What I feel like I got instead was the insufficiently scripted screen play version of a good book. A mass market ‘science’ thriller for people who think that science is a word the CDC shouldn’t be saying.

The Planck Factor had a few issues that really could have been rectified with stronger editing. The needless repetition, for one, got on my nerves rather swiftly. “Millions, even billions” was said a stupid amount of times. And while I understand what the author was trying to do in working the story within a story, it never quite worked for me. It stopped feeling clever and just started feeling too convenient. Actually, that “too convenient” was something that I felt with more than just the double story element.

I’ll admit that The Planck Factor irritated me, but I’m adult enough to admit that its mostly because I didn’t get what I was expecting rather than the story being just outright bad. The story was middling. I made it to the halfway point easily, but after that my interested petered out and it became me forcing myself through it. When you’ve read stuff from authors like James Rollins who are perfect at mixing facts and fiction in a way that keep your head spinning (at least until book 4 or so, at which point everything is just a repackaged version of the previous book), your standards for the genre are probably a bit higher than a book like this can possibly live up to.

Jessica was my favorite part of The Planck Factor. Even if I didn’t particularly care for the story she was involved in, I did feel sorry for her. So, that’s saying something. The dialogue was, whilst not exciting, believable enough. And finally, to end on a positive note, I have to say that the (very) end did surprise me a bit. Because that character is on the page so little, I had basically forgotten about him. (Had to flip back to the first chapter again just to verify!)

Overall, I can't recommend it, and can't say I'll ever seek out the writer's works again in the future, BUT I can see how some readers enjoyed it.

My husband really enjoyed this one! The combination of math/science/mystery was great!!

I usually do not care for novellas, but Debbi's Mack's The Planck Factor will be the first exception. The premise and story line are so unique that the reader instantly becomes enthralled. In the prologue we are given the intrigue that drives the novel: a novelist, a spy, a secret anti-government group and impeding death. Sounds like a plot right out of an Ian Fleming novel, but Mack adds even more twists to add levels to this seemingly straightforward thriller. A type of anti-mimesis, when life imitates art mixed with a reality within a reality. The reader is left guessing until the very end. Hopefully, she will follow up with a continuation of this novel, as there were a few things that seemed unfinished.

The Planck Factor is a science fiction thriller about a young woman who gets tangled up in a world where everything we think we know about physics gets turned on its head. Being a physics major, I was drawn to this book primarily for this reason. Unfortunately, there just wasn't enough of this aspect of the story for me. The story is told in alternating points of view and is structured as a story within a story. It features a female lead, Jessica, a grad student who becomes the target of multiple parties interested in a secret they believe she's keeping for her dead fiance that could have severe implications if it fell into the wrong hands. Most of the book is about Jessica running from these parties and trying to figure out who she can really trust. While she's being chased, she's also working on writing a book that has very eerily similarities to her real life occurrences. The writing itself was just okay. I felt that the chapter breaks were in somewhat awkward moments at times. Story was somewhat predictable up until the end when the author throws in a bit of a twist.

I cannot count how many SF books I've read. I love reading about science. I love thrillers. I hoped to find something of all three in this book.
But sadley, no.
It was confusing. Not enough Planck and too much running around without achieving anything.

This book was warp speed and brilliant!

The speed of light =299 792 458 m / s or is it?

What happens if the speed of light is not a constant but an average? The implications can be disastrous. And the premise of Jessica's new novel, which she is unaware is her new found danger. But the truth is stranger than the fiction.

Jessica Evans, a Grad student, is writing a suspense novel as a challenge to create fiction worthy of being called literary. As she is carving out the manuscript, The Planck Factor, she starts to see similar patterns and events manifest in her life.

The Planck Factor is narrated by Jessica and alternating seamlessly with Alexis, her protagonist of her book. The chapters are short and terse as we see the events unfold in real time with Jessica, and also her main character Alexis. As the chapters progress, Jessica's life seems to be imitating her work. Someone is watching her. In Jessica's novel, also named The Planck Factor, Alexis is being followed by a group-perhaps in regarding her dead fiancee's work. Daniel was a researcher in a lab but never shared the specific details of what he was working on with Swede, his partner. What they were working on was something secretive and valuable to warfare and the future of quantum physics. All of this information for Jessica's book came from someone. And this someone is dead. Jessica is the Alexis in the novel and now fears for her life as she knows what her protagonist knows: the Axis of Evil. Soon, NSA, FBI, and a terror group will be looking for Jessica and the Planck Factor.

The Planck Factor starts off being action pack very early in the story, without giving you a chance to appreciate the characters. The excitement may have intentionally crafted to have the book unfold along side Jessica and the reader. The novel was a fast paced read, and the chapters had hooks that made you want to read every other one. I enjoyed Jessica's internal discussion of the process as she is laying down her words. From a reader's perspective, it was extremely educational, for example, how the backstory as powerful as it may be can slow down the narrative. The science of physics was a draw to the novel, and it did not disappoint. I love a story where I have to google information to understand a certain aspect of the plot, appealing to the geek in myself.

The Geek Factor:
Planck Factor: E = hf where (E) is the energy of the particle which varies directly with its frequency (f). Planck constant (h) is 6.63 × 10-34 Js and central in quantum mechanics. It describes the behavior of photons and waves on the atomic scale. It is hidden and visible and at the same time and provides valuable information about the universe we live. We only see a fraction of the world.

If you want a fast and satisfying read, I highly recommend The Planck Factor. Thank you, NetGalley, BooksGoSocial and the author Debbi Mack for this ARC in exchange for my honest review.

A spoiler-lite summary: The main character, Jess is writing a novel about Alexis, whose fiancé, Daniel, recently died in what appears to be a car crash. He was researching some secretive science with a dude nicknamed Swede. Soon, Swede appears at Alexis's apartment insisting that they are both in great danger. As her novel progresses, Jess's life begins to reveal unexpected parallels and soon she is running for her life. Imagine Stephen King's "The Dark Half" meets "James Bond."

I went into this book having no idea what to expect. It is the first book by Debbi Mack that I've ever read, and it's one of about five novel-length thrillers that I've ever read. What got my attention (and furiously gripped my interest with whitened knuckles) was the title: "The Planck Factor." One of my best friends has recently been learning a great deal about quantum mechanics and has been trying to explain Plancks to me for over a year now. Maybe my over-excitement got the best of me and that's what made me expect this to have something to do with science.

Then again, there was also the fact that the book begins with a quote by Joao Magueijo. He's the actual real-life guy that proposed that the speed of light is not a constant. I spent about half an hour reading about him as soon as Mack quoted him. He's fascinating. I got even more revved up for some soft-scifi.

What I got was a book that focused more on the separation between life and art, reality and fiction. I was hoping these two concepts would blend together at some point (what if reality + art = fiction when the speed of light = xyz?), but they don't really. Mack's main character is an English graduate student (literary major) making her first foray into novel-writing. This explains why the life-vs-art theme is brought up so loudly, I suppose. However, Jess (the novel-writer), also mentions that she wanted to write her thesis on how genre fiction has value as literary fiction. I probably would have been happier reading that thesis (which is NOT an insult to the book). Unfortunately, the difference between genre and literary fiction is never really touched on again. For the first two thirds of the book or so, it gave a cool kind of campy feel to it (which I really wish carried through the whole thing). I can never tell how intentional that is when it's done well, but I would compare it to the camp in Dean Koontz's "Tick Tock." But it wasn't explored any further. Just like the science was sort of dropped after a brief explanation.

Initially, my greatest difficulty with "The Planck Factor" was keeping the characters straight. Immediately, the reader in introduced to a mysterious Kevin person, the main character Jessica, Jessica's protagonist's dead fiancé Daniel, followed by Jessica's protagonist Alexis. This is all within a few pages and swiftly followed by Jess's advisor Shelley and a mysterious team of Cotter and Billy. The audience has the benefit of titles named after the characters, but the initial section of Cotter and Billy is called Joe. Basically, you get a lot thrown in your face really fast. While I was reading, I didn't take that as a bad thing. I usually consider myself to be a very close reader, so I didn't have a terribly impossible time following the story, but I did appreciate the challenge. I also trusted myself and the book enough that I allowed myself to settle into a surreal confusion. This paired nicely with the life-art-fiction-reality themes.

Here lies the spoilers! I thought I had picked up on every detail by the last few pages of the book. Then I get to the epilogue. It's titled "Kevin." Kevin is writing a book in some sort of hospital because he couldn't publish the information (which he "paid the highest price possible for") as non-fiction. Suddenly I realize, who the bloody extremist conspirators is Kevin? I have a guess or two, but it seemed to come out of nowhere in an unsatisfactory way. If I hadn't already been disappointed by the lack of science and other aforementioned themes, I would probably re-read the book to find out. If the rest of the ending had been satisfying, I would go back and skim. However there wasn't enough here for me to put the effort in. Maybe someone who mainly reads thrillers would enjoy this book, but if you're expecting anything beyond a thriller, lower your expectations.

Nevertheless, thanks NetGalley, for giving me access to a book that helped expand my genre horizons a little.