A review by nocto
Body Tourists by Jane Rogers

dark emotional reflective fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

All those people who get cryogenically frozen in the hope that science will some day figure out how to bring them back to life? This is the book for them. Or maybe they shouldn’t read it…

The book is set sometime in the not too distant future and a scientist hasn’t exactly figured out how to bring Walt Disney back from his cryogenic suspension into eternal life but he has figured out how to take the memories of people who have been frozen when they died and have them take over the bodies of young adults for a couple of weeks. Which is a far more interesting setup really. First, it’s all rather shady so there’s a limited amount of people willing to have their bodies taken over which makes the choice of who to give a couple of weeks of extra life to a bit of a dilemma to start with. Then there’s the viewpoint of the people whose bodies are used and how they feel about it. And also by using young healthy bodies for the procedure but mostly the memories of elderly people who have died you are giving those people a chance at being young again so they aren’t really the same people they were.

There’s a number of scenarios in the book, some of them go really well and many of them go badly. I thought the book was very well thought out and the topic explored nicely through a range of different characters. And that’s before you get onto the kind of dystopian future that’s running around in the background behind the story which is set dressing that could have been a book in itself. All in all, a really good read!