A Quokka Dreeds its Weird

A classic teleportation novel. Teenage Davy teleports for the first time to escape his abusive father, ending up in a place he sees as safe: the public library. He takes the opportunity to run away, and promptly teleports again (back to the library) when a gang of truckers try to rape him.

The first half of the book is a meticulous working out of how a smart teenager could do cool things with teleportation but no ID or street smarts. The second half is about him doing cool things with teleportation to foil hijackers and evade government agents. Both parts involve a whole lot of dealing with trauma, in an unsubtle but realistic way. There's a romance that never shows why Davy and Millie are into each other specifically, though it's pretty realistic about how undealt-with trauma is not good for relationships.

I found it maddening that Davy often makes no attempt to hide the fact that he can teleport and repeatedly does it in front of random people without ever thinking through the implications of that, even though he thinks through the implications of practically everything else. By the end of the book, the government knows all about him, he’s threatened to kidnap the President, and he can be stopped if he gets drugged or cuffed to something heavy. There’s a sequel in which I assume that comes back to haunt him.

The book was notably dated in two ways: New York City is a hellhole of crime where you can’t step outside without getting mugged, and a plane or ship gets hijacked about once a month.

I liked the first part of the book better than the second. The hijacking stuff was ostensibly higher stakes, but I found it dull and implausible. The teleportation mechanics were fun, though since they're so meticulously detailed that it bugged me a bit that there is no energy cost in teleporting. He can do it as much as he likes, as far as he likes, to any place he’s seen in person, and it never makes him tired. Where does the energy for that come from?

It never addresses the question of why Davy can teleport, other than to confirm that his parents can't. I'm guessing spontaneous mutation.

I read this years and years ago, and recall having basically the same reaction. I re-read it because someone (Layla?) said I should read the sequel, which I never picked up. On to the sequel! (I see that there are actually four sequels, one of which is a movie spinoff.)

Linking to paper version of book. I don't recommend the Kindle, which I read, as it loses the spaces to indicate transitions. Without them, the book seems to often jump, as it were, to a completely different time and space within the same scene.

Jumper: A Novel (I see that this version has been graced with "A Novel.")