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A review by verkisto
Harrison Squared by Daryl Gregory
4.0
This is an odd book. It's a prequel to Gregory's We Are All Completely Fine, in that it tells the story of one of the characters in that book, Harrison Harrison, whose life inspired a series of children's books. The thing is, Harrison Squared is that children's book (well, YA at best), which makes it not just a prequel but also a meta story related to the original work.
Harrison travels with his mom, a marine biologist, to a town in Massachusetts called Dunnsmouth, where she hopes to capture footage of an underwater beast. Harrison thinks she's after giant squids and the like, but Dunnsmouth is hiding something far more interesting than the usual deep-sea creatures. In fact, the creature she's hoping to discover relates back to when Harrison's father was killed, and when Harrison himself lost his left leg.
This is a wildly compelling book, which surprises me, since WAACF didn't grip me the same way. Gregory captures his characters well, doing that thing good writers do where you try to pinpoint where, exactly, you started to relate to the characters so well, but it happens so slowly over the course of the narrative that you can't do it. They grow organically, building relationships in the same way real people do, over time and (sometimes) reluctantly, and they do it so well that it's impossible not to root for them.
The plot is a little simplified, but the story doesn't suffer for it. Key characteristics of the characters will obviously play into plot resolutions near the end, but Gregory handles his characters so well that it's hard to complain about it. The story itself doesn't answer all the questions it asks, which isn't always a bad thing, but here it feels more like a cliffhanger ending than an ambiguity that's intended to make the reader think. I read an interview that suggests Gregory hopes to make a trilogy out of this, but that he hasn't written anything else in the series yet. I feel a little cheated by it, but hopefully the book does well enough to justify getting the rest of these books written. You know, as soon as possible.
Harrison Squared wasn't a book I was itching to read, but it surprised me. WAACF wasn't one of those books that made me want to go out and read everything Gregory wrote, but Harrison Squared is. I see a lot of his books have won acclaim and awards, so I've added another book of his to my to-read list (current count: 600+). I'm eager to see how Pandemonium shakes out.
Harrison travels with his mom, a marine biologist, to a town in Massachusetts called Dunnsmouth, where she hopes to capture footage of an underwater beast. Harrison thinks she's after giant squids and the like, but Dunnsmouth is hiding something far more interesting than the usual deep-sea creatures. In fact, the creature she's hoping to discover relates back to when Harrison's father was killed, and when Harrison himself lost his left leg.
This is a wildly compelling book, which surprises me, since WAACF didn't grip me the same way. Gregory captures his characters well, doing that thing good writers do where you try to pinpoint where, exactly, you started to relate to the characters so well, but it happens so slowly over the course of the narrative that you can't do it. They grow organically, building relationships in the same way real people do, over time and (sometimes) reluctantly, and they do it so well that it's impossible not to root for them.
The plot is a little simplified, but the story doesn't suffer for it. Key characteristics of the characters will obviously play into plot resolutions near the end, but Gregory handles his characters so well that it's hard to complain about it. The story itself doesn't answer all the questions it asks, which isn't always a bad thing, but here it feels more like a cliffhanger ending than an ambiguity that's intended to make the reader think. I read an interview that suggests Gregory hopes to make a trilogy out of this, but that he hasn't written anything else in the series yet. I feel a little cheated by it, but hopefully the book does well enough to justify getting the rest of these books written. You know, as soon as possible.
Harrison Squared wasn't a book I was itching to read, but it surprised me. WAACF wasn't one of those books that made me want to go out and read everything Gregory wrote, but Harrison Squared is. I see a lot of his books have won acclaim and awards, so I've added another book of his to my to-read list (current count: 600+). I'm eager to see how Pandemonium shakes out.