‘The Butterfly Effect ‘: the scientific theory that a single occurrence, no matter how small, can change the course of the universe forever.

When a butterfly startles a young rabbit, and the rabbit makes a horse rear, it starts a chain of events, over the course of one day, that will change people’s lives …and end people’s lives.

From a climber on Everest to a boy in Malawi …from a commercial pilot to an American psycho …the chaos knows no bounds.

This heart-stopping adventure by writer, film maker and climber Matt Dickinson will leave readers breathless. It’s the book Jack Bauer would have read as a teenager!

– Publisher’s Blurb

Matt Dickinson stopped by earlier to talk about his top five extreme reads, and just a short while ago I finished his first YA novel Mortal Chaos. Taking the concept of The Butterfly Effect Matt Dickinson weaves together a number of characters lives, all affected and brought together by the single beat of a butterfly’s wings in a small Wiltshire wood.

As the book opens, we are introduced to the large cast of characters spread out around the world, initially following their ordinary daily activities, before their lives are thrown in to chaos. (Apologies to my non-British blog readers who probably won’t know the TV programme) I was reminded of the usual start to an episode of Casualty, knowing the smelly stuff is about to hit the spinny thing for many of them, they just don’t know it yet.

Told in short snappy chapters rarely more than a page in length, often less. Matt Dickinson definitely keeps things moving, and you wanting to keep turning the pages. It could be a real mess, with so many individual story lines to follow, but he pulls it off with just the right amount of cliff-hangers and red-herrings to make you think you know what is going to happen next. Even then you’ll see a few things a connection or two ahead and want to follow them though to see what happens.

My only real issue was with the characters, we spend so little time with them each visit, with some of them it was quite hard to feel a connection until nearer the end. Yet there were some like the climber Kuni, who strong from the off. But that hardly matters when you keep turning the pages just to see what the next consequence of that butterfly is, and just how the author will wrap some of the less obvious connections into the mix.

Suffice it to say, not every consequence is a primary one, and it’s a pretty satsifying mix by the explosive ending.

A perfect read for younger teenage boys, especially those who are reluctant to, or claim not to have time to read.

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Buy: Mortal Chaos by Matt Dickinson from The Book Depository