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A review by swalk
Prophet by Sin Blaché, Helen Macdonald
adventurous
dark
funny
mysterious
sad
tense
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
A futuristic sci-fi thriller. Rao is an ex-MI6 agent, pulled out of prison to help with a special investigation. An American diner has appeared out of nowhere in a UK field, it is not the first item like this. No one knows where they came from or how they came to be here, but all have turned up near a US army base. Rao is tasked with helping solve the mystery and is placed under the observation of his ex army colleague Adam.
Rao is somehow able to tell the difference between what is true and what is not true. He doesn’t know how he knows, but this skillset makes him invaluable to all government agencies. Working together Rao and Adam must get to the heart of what is causing these strange items to appear and how.
*SPOILERS*
They soon discover there is private testing going on of drug called prophet, which causes the subject to think a nostalgic item of matter into being.
I felt like this was a really interesting premise, but a little disjointed in places. This could be because it’s quite a complex idea based in ‘physics’ and the characters themselves aren’t quite sure what’s going on, so it gets very confusing when the drugs become involved. I felt like a little more explanation between them being tailed and going to the lab could have happened, or at least some further explanation at the lab. It felt like it was assumed the reader knew certain things which we didn’t. I did appreciate the touches on string theory and things of that ilk though.
I thought the complex relationship between Rao and Adam was really well written and enjoyed the jump in timelines with both characters backstories, also that it was easy to assume that one characters backstory was in fact the others which added a nice twist. It gave the characters a lot more depth.
Most of the action happened in the last 15% of the book which was excellent, but I would have like a little more of the ‘weird stuff’ throughout. This book really has so much potential to be amazing. I felt like there was a flavour of Adrian Tchaikovsky in there at times, who I love.
Great narration, but unfortunately there were a lot of strange and obvious edits to the audio, which broke the flow of the book and made it hard to become immersed. It was clear that the recordings were with different equipment and/or different rooms and did not run together smoothly (It seems to resolve itself after the first 30%?) This has resulted in me deducting 1 *star from my rating as it impacted my enjoyment. I would suggest reviewing the first third of the recordings for inconsistencies.
Rao is somehow able to tell the difference between what is true and what is not true. He doesn’t know how he knows, but this skillset makes him invaluable to all government agencies. Working together Rao and Adam must get to the heart of what is causing these strange items to appear and how.
*SPOILERS*
They soon discover there is private testing going on of drug called prophet, which causes the subject to think a nostalgic item of matter into being.
I felt like this was a really interesting premise, but a little disjointed in places. This could be because it’s quite a complex idea based in ‘physics’ and the characters themselves aren’t quite sure what’s going on, so it gets very confusing when the drugs become involved. I felt like a little more explanation between them being tailed and going to the lab could have happened, or at least some further explanation at the lab. It felt like it was assumed the reader knew certain things which we didn’t. I did appreciate the touches on string theory and things of that ilk though.
I thought the complex relationship between Rao and Adam was really well written and enjoyed the jump in timelines with both characters backstories, also that it was easy to assume that one characters backstory was in fact the others which added a nice twist. It gave the characters a lot more depth.
Most of the action happened in the last 15% of the book which was excellent, but I would have like a little more of the ‘weird stuff’ throughout. This book really has so much potential to be amazing. I felt like there was a flavour of Adrian Tchaikovsky in there at times, who I love.
Great narration, but unfortunately there were a lot of strange and obvious edits to the audio, which broke the flow of the book and made it hard to become immersed. It was clear that the recordings were with different equipment and/or different rooms and did not run together smoothly (It seems to resolve itself after the first 30%?) This has resulted in me deducting 1 *star from my rating as it impacted my enjoyment. I would suggest reviewing the first third of the recordings for inconsistencies.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Homophobia and Body horror