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niallharrison's review
challenging
mysterious
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
4.0
oldmansimms's review
2.0
1.5 stars, rounded up. I hate to rate it so low, as I never got to a point where I wanted to quit reading it. I did have reservations, but was interested to see where it was going, but the problem is that it did not come close to sticking the landing, so the overall experience must be judged accordingly.
Expect Me Tomorrow is another in a micro-genre that I keep running into surprisingly often (along with things like Maja Lunde's A History of Bees and Anthony Doerr's Cloud Cuckoo Land): a climate-themed interbraiding of multiple storylines across time. This book skips the present-day storyline of the other examples I mention, instead focusing on two main threads: one in the late 19th-very early 20th century, and another focusing on the year 2050 suffering from the effects of climate change.
In the past storyline, we follow Adler Beck, a glaciologist; in the future storyline, Chad Ramsey, a police profiler (and distant descendent of Adler Beck). Both men have a twin brother (Dolf and Greg; if the twin pairing is for a thematic reason, it was not clear to me), and this partially drives the interrelationship of the plotlines -- Dolf is a bit of a ne'er-do-well, and is several times (mistakenly) jailed for fraud (in what seems to be based directly on a real historical case of mistaken identity), while Greg, a reporter, is worried about his job as the news organization he works for is set to roll out bafflingly comprehensive background checks, in which the fuzzy family legend of "Uncle Adolf" the maybe-criminal may represent grounds for him not keeping his job.
Greg asks Chad to look into it for him, and when conventional genealogical investigations turn up no leads (because Dolf's nephew, Greg and Chad's direct ancestor, changed his surname after Dolf's convictions) Chad turns to an unexpected technological solution. Priest introduces two bits of future-tech here: "Instant Mental Communication," a neural weave of nanomaterial grafted into one's head (which Chad seems most excited to use for listening to music or watching movies, or occasionally for video chats); and the "DNA visualizer," a piece of tech that Priest is so uninterested in explaining that it borders on the magical. When combined with IMC, the visualizer allows Chad to literally inhabit the sensorium of whoever's DNA is being specified (who then experiences a sort of locked-in syndrome until Chad withdraws). Here we have the purpose of Adler and Dolf being twins, I suppose - due to their identical genome Chad sometimes pops into one of them, and sometimes the other, confusing his attempts to determine the truth of the prison stories (which basically consists of him barging into one of their minds and going "ADOLF RAMSEY? PRISON? TELL ME ABOUT PRISON," which you will be shocked to learn is not particularly effective anyway).
The climate piece of the story comes from Adler's research into the Gulf Stream, paralleled with Chad's encounter with some corporate research that suggests the same thing: that, greenhouse effect notwithstanding, the disruption of the Gulf Stream due to melting Arctic ice (plus a cyclical diminution of solar intensity) will actually result in a COLDER climate in the not-so-distant future. It's a new take on the "climate apocalypse" fiction I'm encountering lately, but I can't say I found it totally convincing (unlike Chad, who is lock-stock-and-barrel in on the idea because he's "following the scientific evidence"). Chad's research into this doesn't seem to serve much of any plot purpose, though, and seems totally in service of Christopher Priest having read a few books or papers suggesting it and wanting to build a book around it.
Likewise, neither does the Dolf Beck wrongful-conviction plotline. Again, it seems that Priest came across the historical case, thought it would be cool to put in a book, and just winged it (along with copious anachronism; see this excellent review for more detail). The two halves of the plot really do not cohere at all. For instance: partway through the book Greg leaves his job at the news organization whose background check prompted all this to begin with, leaving no reason to go time-traveling to get further details on the legend of "Uncle Adolf" (setting aside the many other issues with this plotline from a suspension-of-disbelief sense). Nevertheless, Chad continues to do research into it, even as his brother more than once reminds him that it's no longer necessary, and I was never convinced why he should. To satisfy his own curiosity, no doubt, but the story isn't interesting enough to me as a reader to want to be along for the ride.
All in all, a bit of an incoherent mess. As I see it, what value you get out of it will be in direct proportion to how interesting you find the two kernels of real-world information Priest has built it around, but unfortunately the framework he's built adds nothing.
Thanks to NetGalley and Hachette for the ARC.
Expect Me Tomorrow is another in a micro-genre that I keep running into surprisingly often (along with things like Maja Lunde's A History of Bees and Anthony Doerr's Cloud Cuckoo Land): a climate-themed interbraiding of multiple storylines across time. This book skips the present-day storyline of the other examples I mention, instead focusing on two main threads: one in the late 19th-very early 20th century, and another focusing on the year 2050 suffering from the effects of climate change.
In the past storyline, we follow Adler Beck, a glaciologist; in the future storyline, Chad Ramsey, a police profiler (and distant descendent of Adler Beck). Both men have a twin brother (Dolf and Greg; if the twin pairing is for a thematic reason, it was not clear to me), and this partially drives the interrelationship of the plotlines -- Dolf is a bit of a ne'er-do-well, and is several times (mistakenly) jailed for fraud (in what seems to be based directly on a real historical case of mistaken identity), while Greg, a reporter, is worried about his job as the news organization he works for is set to roll out bafflingly comprehensive background checks, in which the fuzzy family legend of "Uncle Adolf" the maybe-criminal may represent grounds for him not keeping his job.
Greg asks Chad to look into it for him, and when conventional genealogical investigations turn up no leads (because Dolf's nephew, Greg and Chad's direct ancestor, changed his surname after Dolf's convictions) Chad turns to an unexpected technological solution. Priest introduces two bits of future-tech here: "Instant Mental Communication," a neural weave of nanomaterial grafted into one's head (which Chad seems most excited to use for listening to music or watching movies, or occasionally for video chats); and the "DNA visualizer," a piece of tech that Priest is so uninterested in explaining that it borders on the magical. When combined with IMC, the visualizer allows Chad to literally inhabit the sensorium of whoever's DNA is being specified (who then experiences a sort of locked-in syndrome until Chad withdraws). Here we have the purpose of Adler and Dolf being twins, I suppose - due to their identical genome Chad sometimes pops into one of them, and sometimes the other, confusing his attempts to determine the truth of the prison stories (which basically consists of him barging into one of their minds and going "ADOLF RAMSEY? PRISON? TELL ME ABOUT PRISON," which you will be shocked to learn is not particularly effective anyway).
The climate piece of the story comes from Adler's research into the Gulf Stream, paralleled with Chad's encounter with some corporate research that suggests the same thing: that, greenhouse effect notwithstanding, the disruption of the Gulf Stream due to melting Arctic ice (plus a cyclical diminution of solar intensity) will actually result in a COLDER climate in the not-so-distant future. It's a new take on the "climate apocalypse" fiction I'm encountering lately, but I can't say I found it totally convincing (unlike Chad, who is lock-stock-and-barrel in on the idea because he's "following the scientific evidence"). Chad's research into this doesn't seem to serve much of any plot purpose, though, and seems totally in service of Christopher Priest having read a few books or papers suggesting it and wanting to build a book around it.
Likewise, neither does the Dolf Beck wrongful-conviction plotline. Again, it seems that Priest came across the historical case, thought it would be cool to put in a book, and just winged it (along with copious anachronism; see this excellent review for more detail). The two halves of the plot really do not cohere at all. For instance: partway through the book Greg leaves his job at the news organization whose background check prompted all this to begin with, leaving no reason to go time-traveling to get further details on the legend of "Uncle Adolf" (setting aside the many other issues with this plotline from a suspension-of-disbelief sense). Nevertheless, Chad continues to do research into it, even as his brother more than once reminds him that it's no longer necessary, and I was never convinced why he should. To satisfy his own curiosity, no doubt, but the story isn't interesting enough to me as a reader to want to be along for the ride.
All in all, a bit of an incoherent mess. As I see it, what value you get out of it will be in direct proportion to how interesting you find the two kernels of real-world information Priest has built it around, but unfortunately the framework he's built adds nothing.
Thanks to NetGalley and Hachette for the ARC.
charlottej's review against another edition
emotional
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
3.75
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