BLUE GEMINI by Mike Jenne

Narrated by Kevin Stillwell

The Right Stuff...No Your Other Right !

Blue Gemini is billed as a thriller but it is a thriller only in the cerebral sense. Anyone who grew up in the early days of the Space Program and who followed the progress of the Mercury and Gemini programs will find a lot of things to like. This novel is written in a style that is reminiscent of some of the older works of Science Fiction in that it has a large amount of explanatory passages. But unlike early science fiction novels this novel spent a great deal of time working on character development and realistic dialog. Somehow this fits quite nicely with the whole sixties motif and the early days of the Space Program. A book set in the 1960s and done in the style of the Science Fiction of the time. A time when the culture in the United States was a bit more stolid and formal.

I lived through the 1960s and the early days of the Cold War space race with the Soviet Union. Blue Gemini has more than the feel of the 1960s, it actually evokes many memories if that time for me. One of the things I really enjoy are all the references to the songs from Creedence Clearwater Revival and the Beatles and the movies like Dr. Strangelove and 2001: A Space Odyssey. Anyone having lived through this time will instantly recognize that all of these references are Period Correct. Just as the book Ready Player One was a great piece of nostalgia for those who lived through the 1980s, Blue Gemini is a real blast from the past for those who lived through the 1960s.

I really love the whole idea of a Black Ops Space Program running parallel with the Gemini program back in the 60s.

This is the simply told straightforward story. As the novel progressed about halfway through it suddenly dawned on me that the narrator Kevin Stillwell is really quite good. The narrator's character impressions excellent. Each character is given a distinct voice and very appropriate voice I might add. When I started the book I begin to wonder when it was going to become a thriller as it was billed but I stuck with it and am glad I did. Soon I began to like the characters. All the sudden I began to find every scene interesting because it was a scene involving somebody I liked. The pacing which I had first thought was a bit slow became normal; it became realistic and lifelike. And I think that's the intent of the author. One of the great charms of this novel is that it harkens back for me to an earlier time maybe in a sense start to relive the 1960s the 1960s Space Program of which I was fascinated with as a child.