The story begins with every single person alive being simultaneously imbued with the memories, feelings and emotion of another person. Permanently paired with another person. Children are paired with adults, men with women, killer with pacifist without rhyme or reason.

The book itself is less a contiguous story so much as it follows the hours and days after the event with several individuals. How they deal or avoid dealing with what they have gained is different for each. You might even call it a story made up of several character studies, each with its own conflict and resolution.

I found the individual stories to be very interesting. What the characters chose to do with the new knowledge was equally interesting. All those hidden little crimes and dirty little secrets are now exposed and nothing will ever be the same. People can suddenly understand and speak different languages and employ new skills and knowledge.

We see resolution to the conflicts of each character but, and this is my only complaint of the story, the incident is never really explained or completely addressed. It is simply something unexplained that happened to humanity and with it a new day has risen.

I enjoyed the book and recommend it to anyone who enjoys Science Fiction that doesn’t delve too deeply into the science but focuses on the characters.

Cinco de Mayo is a Science Fiction novel written by Michael J. Martineck.  It was published September 15^th, 2010 by Edge Science Fiction and Fantasy Publishing and is available from Amazon.com in paperback edition for $11.66.