A review by gobblebook
Summerland by Hannu Rajaniemi

3.0

I think I would have really loved this book if I hadn't been confused the whole time. I might have been a lot less confused if I hadn't listened to the audiobook - there are a lot of characters, and with an audiobook you can't flip back to remind yourself who someone is. It takes place between the World Wars, in an alternate universe where scientists have discovered how to have access to the afterlife. The living can communicate with the dead, and the dead can inhabit bodies to interact with the world of the living. Naturally this makes war very different. The main character, Rachel, is a spy whose skill is underestimated because she is a woman. She gets demoted, but secretly continues her spy work, pretending to be a double agent so that she can uncover the mole in her own agency. The fact that she is pretending to be a double agent and working with another double agent also makes things confusing, because it's hard to keep track of who is really on which side or what the sides even are. As a spy thriller, this is quite good. On top of that, the world building is really interesting, even if I didn't always understand it completely. This is normally the kind of genre bending that I love, but I was frustrated by not understanding what was happening a lot of the time.