You need to sign in or sign up before continuing.
Take a photo of a barcode or cover
3.76 AVERAGE
3.76 AVERAGE
mysterious
reflective
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
A mildly interesting sci-fi concept completely bulldozed by a boring mediocre murder mystery.
You can't set up an all-knowing, future-predicting character as the one who sets lethal stakes for the rest to solve a murder mystery, because of course that character is the murderer. Absolutely nothing else would make sense.
You also can't have that character be the first-person POV for the entire novel, because then the whole novel is just a contrivance - we know this character knows everything, so the only reason we don't know is because they're not telling us. It's an author stand-in, and we just have to wait for the author to explain their silly little mystery.
The author does so not through characters discovering things in situ, allowing us to briefly glimpse the nature of the clue before they confirm it themselves. Instead we just get reams and reams of dialogue from characters suddenly working a chunk of stuff out.
Anyway, it all ends up as a weird trolley problem where a handful of people must be killed to save others, but the author (and his stand-in) have seemingly infinite trolleys to make sure it happens. Pointless, stake-less.
It's all such a shame because there's some quite interesting sci-fi stuff going on here - although, notably nothing I haven't seen done well before, in everything from Assassin's Creed to Blade Runner. For Lost fans, there's even a mysterious black fog that turns out to be completely uninteresting, under-explained and redundant to the plot.
Turton seems to be full of interesting takes on speculative tropes, but is obsessed with driving a blunt sledgehammer of a mystery right through the heart of his own mildly entertaining worlds.
He ends with a pretty arrogant "oops sorry" set of acknowledgements, thanking readers for putting up with his capriciousness while apologising to editors and agents about complete rewrites and tossed out drafts during edits. This messy approach is very evident in the text, and I hope one day Turton decides to change the way he works rather than apologise for it afterwards.
You can't set up an all-knowing, future-predicting character as the one who sets lethal stakes for the rest to solve a murder mystery, because of course that character is the murderer. Absolutely nothing else would make sense.
You also can't have that character be the first-person POV for the entire novel, because then the whole novel is just a contrivance - we know this character knows everything, so the only reason we don't know is because they're not telling us. It's an author stand-in, and we just have to wait for the author to explain their silly little mystery.
The author does so not through characters discovering things in situ, allowing us to briefly glimpse the nature of the clue before they confirm it themselves. Instead we just get reams and reams of dialogue from characters suddenly working a chunk of stuff out.
Anyway, it all ends up as a weird trolley problem where a handful of people must be killed to save others, but the author (and his stand-in) have seemingly infinite trolleys to make sure it happens. Pointless, stake-less.
It's all such a shame because there's some quite interesting sci-fi stuff going on here - although, notably nothing I haven't seen done well before, in everything from Assassin's Creed to Blade Runner. For Lost fans, there's even a mysterious black fog that turns out to be completely uninteresting, under-explained and redundant to the plot.
Turton seems to be full of interesting takes on speculative tropes, but is obsessed with driving a blunt sledgehammer of a mystery right through the heart of his own mildly entertaining worlds.
He ends with a pretty arrogant "oops sorry" set of acknowledgements, thanking readers for putting up with his capriciousness while apologising to editors and agents about complete rewrites and tossed out drafts during edits. This messy approach is very evident in the text, and I hope one day Turton decides to change the way he works rather than apologise for it afterwards.
Sadly, I couldn't find my groove with this one. There are genuinely interesting ethical questions about humanity, AI, and self-determination here, but they unfortunately failed to click for me as I just couldn't get into the writing style. I genuinely tried, but didn't really like or care about any of the two-dimensional characters, and certainly didn't find the setting or the cultural norms of this fictional society to be compelling. As such, I never really got invested in the mystery. I did like the one major plot revelation (about halfway through the book), but it wasn't enough to save things for me.
It didn't help that I split this as an audiobook, featuring one of the worst narrators I've ever heard. This one would have benefited from a woman's voice, but instead I got a deep-voiced man delivering a flat reading offset by an unnerving combination of ridiculously pitched voices for the female characters and brutally awful accents all around.
It didn't help that I split this as an audiobook, featuring one of the worst narrators I've ever heard. This one would have benefited from a woman's voice, but instead I got a deep-voiced man delivering a flat reading offset by an unnerving combination of ridiculously pitched voices for the female characters and brutally awful accents all around.
adventurous
mysterious
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
I was definitely engaged in this one but it felt derivative in the sci-fi department…
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
hopeful
inspiring
mysterious
reflective
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
mysterious
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
mysterious
medium-paced
adventurous
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No