The Girl Who Could Move Sh*t with Her Mind by Jackson Ford

Teagan Frost is having a hard time keeping it together. Sure, she’s got telekinetic powers — a skill that the government is all too happy to make use of, sending her on secret break-in missions that no ordinary human could carry out. But all she really wants to do is kick back, have a beer, and pretend she’s normal for once.

The Girl Who Could Move Sh*t with Her Mind
by Jackson Ford
ISBN 9780316519151
Posted 06/01/19 SFevu: http://www.sfrevu.com/php/Review-id.php?id=18447

Not only is this a kick-ass adventure with a spunky girl whose parents tweaked her genome to give her telekinetic, no…um…psychokinetic powers (like there’s a difference) but it’s got the only afterword I’ve ever enjoyed reading. Mostly because Ford roped his character into writing it for him (like we fell for that, Teagan.).

Teagan Frost can move sh*t with her mind. In order to stay out of government labs and/or dissection tables, she does super-secret work for them out of The China Shop, a ‘pretend’ moving company in LA. Except that some times they actually do moving jobs, because when you can take all the weight off a refrigerator, it makes it easier to carry, right? Just as long as you don’t let on.

One day after the usual mission impossible hijinks, the last person Teagan and the team scoped out turns up dead, and by dead we mean killed by someone who could clearly move sh*t with their mind. Except that as far as she knows, nobody else can do that and she’s pretty sure it wasn’t her. No, she’s totally sure. In fact, she doesn’t even have the strength to bend rebar around someone’s neck.

Now she’s got 22 hours to clear her name before the spook the team reports to throws them under the bus and her back in a locked lab.

It’s a classic motley crew set up, but more motley than usual. The China Shop has a guy with a bit of OCD to organize things, a hacker who used to be a chopper pilot before the crash put her in a wheelchair, a Mexican wheelman who knows all the ways, and a street tough who no longer has anything to do with MS-13. Well, practically.

Then there’s Teagan. Sarcastic, wisecracking, impulsive, unlovable, (x)manic Teagan. You’ll love her as much as the team does. Well, maybe she’ll grow on you.

We don’t get a lot of paranormal science fiction anymore, probably because the research hasn’t panned out the way Dr. Rhine and his friends hoped back in the before-time when Fringe science was a thing and the CIA was doing experiments that would turn into Stranger Things. What we’ve got now is a lot of superhero stories, which throw physics out the window without a qualm. Much as I like Stephen Gould’s books where a special few can teleport, he doesn’t try to make sense of the science involved. On the other hand, he does follow the golden rule of SF: Accept one improbable thing and see how it affects the real world. Folks like James Alan Gardner (All Those Explosions Were Someone Else’s Fault) write superhero stories with at least an acknowledgment that it’s super-hero-science, and some, like Even Curie (Superhuman), go so far as to toss us a bone about super-advanced-alien tech, for which I”m grateful.

Ford doesn’t quite reveal the source of Teagan’s power, but he leans heavily into genetic tweaking by her brilliant gene researcher parents. It’s not just Teagen that they managed to tweak, one way or another, as evidenced by her adversary in this book, and the promise of things to come at the end. What’s laudable here is that the author sets the limits of her power at the opening, and then doesn’t make up new sh*t just cause it makes the plot work. Well, actually, bending the rules he’s set up is critical to the story, but it’s the point, not an easy way out, and instead of feeling like he’s cheating, it’s a logical progression for Teagan.

The GIrl Who Could Move Sh*t with Her Mind is totally enjoyable, though how a nice white girl like Teagan can like rap is beyond me. It’s a great read, and best of all, she’ll be back in Random Sh*t Flying Trough the Air. Whenever she gets to it.

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