If you’re craving a light weight, lightly SF, YA novel you need look no further then Noggin by John Corey Whaley. The premise is simple… Travis Coates is dying of leukemia so he makes the decision to have his head frozen in the hopes that at some future time he can somehow be restored to life. Fast forward five years and Travis awakes to find that his head has been surgically transplanted onto another person’s body. He must adjust to a life where everyone is 5 years ahead of him. His girlfriend has moved on, his best friend seems to have regressed, there’s something about his family. The story is readable and fairly interesting though it suffers from a “the scenario is implausible in the time frame allotted” problem. Not to mention no inclusion of the technology that would have had to have been around for the operation to even be possible as part of the overall story line. The hero is seriously self-involved and not very likable though as the story develops the author makes a good behind the scenes case for it being reasonable that he is like this.All in all a book I would recommend to someone who likes a teen’s point of view and doesn’t mind improbable SF.
