The 22 Murders of Madison May, By Max Barry ~ 4.0 Stars

Tags

Adult Fiction, Science Fiction, Speculative Fiction, Thriller

Thanks to NetGalley and G.P. Putnam’s Sons for providing an eARC in exchange for an honest review.

Release Date: July 6th, 2021

336 Pages

Synopsis: From the critically acclaimed author of Jennifer Government and Lexicon, comes mind-bending, speculative, psychological suspense, about a serial killer pursuing his victim through time and space, and the woman who is determined to stop him, even if it upends her own reality.

I love you. In every world.

Young real estate agent Madison May is shocked when a client at an open house says these words to her. The man, a stranger, seems to know far too much about her and professes his love—shortly before he murders her.

Felicity Staples hates reporting on murders. As a journalist for a midsize New York City paper, she know she must take on the assignment to research Madison May’s shocking murder, but the crime seems random and the suspect is in the wind. That is, until Felicity spots the killer on the subway right before he vanishes.

Soon Felicity senses her entire universe has shifted. No one remembers Madison May, or Felicity’s encounter with the mysterious man. And her cat is missing. Felicity realizes that in her pursuit of Madison’s killer, she followed him into a different dimension—one where everything about her existence is slightly altered. At first she is determined to return to the reality she knows, but when Madison May—in this world, a struggling actress—is murdered again, Felicity decides she must find the killer—and learns she is not the only one hunting him.

Traveling through different realities, Felicity uncovers the opportunity—and danger—of living more than one life. (Goodreads)

After reading the synopsis for The 22 Deaths of Madison May, the idea of a serial killer pursuing different versions of his victim through the multiverse immediately made me sit up and take notice. For the most part I’m happy to say that it lived up to my expectations. The pace was extremely fast except for a few chapters in the middle which seemed unnecessarily repetitive. Except for Felicity and Madison, the other characters weren’t all that well developed which wound up being my primary issue. I would have especially liked to know more about Clayton, the deranged, fiercely determined serial killer. He comes across as your stereotypical stalker who becomes obsessed with a pretty young woman. I was expecting a little more I guess given the complexity of the plot. The ending wrapped everything up pretty satisfactorily and the fate of Clayton is a wonderful example of someone getting their just desserts. Overall, The 22 Murders of Madison May, snagged my attention and I easily finished it in less than two days. The idea of the multiverse with different versions of us that are similar yet different fascinates me, and Max Barry’s take on it is quite entertaining. It’s also made me want to go back and read Max Barry’s previous books. I unhesitatingly recommend this to readers who enjoy speculative fiction and exciting mystery/thrillers. 

Red Clocks, by Leni Zumas ~ 4.5 Stars

Tags

Adult Fiction, DystopianFiction, Speculative Fiction, Women’s Rights

Thanks to NetGalley and Little, Brown and Company for providing an eARC in exchange for an honest review.

Release Date: Available Now

368 Pages

Synopsis: Five women. One question. What is a woman for?

In this ferociously imaginative novel, abortion is once again illegal in America, in-vitro fertilization is banned, and the Personhood Amendment grants rights of life, liberty, and property to every embryo. In a small Oregon fishing town, five very different women navigate these new barriers alongside age-old questions surrounding motherhood, identity, and freedom.

Ro, a single high-school teacher, is trying to have a baby on her own, while also writing a biography of Eivor, a little-known 19th-century female polar explorer. Susan is a frustrated mother of two, trapped in a crumbling marriage. Mattie is the adopted daughter of doting parents and one of Ro’s best students, who finds herself pregnant with nowhere to fan. And Gin is the gifted, forest-dwelling homeopath, or “mender,” who brings all their fates together when she’s arrested and put on trial in a frenzied modern-day witch hunt.

Red Clocks is so eerily similar to our world that it’s a bit scary. There’s no one cataclysmic event behind the “Personhood Amendment”. What allows this bill to be passed is a pro-life government and apathetic citizens who think this will never happen. Do you see any similarities? Are you starting to squirm yet?

This thought-provoking novel focuses on the lives of four women in a small Oregon town, whose lives converge in unexpected ways. Ro, the Biographer is desperate to have a child. Susan, the Wife wants to escape her failing marriage. Mattie, the Daughter wants to attend the Math Academy. And finally, Gin, the Mender, who provides medicinal herbs to women who have gynecological problems. She also helps those looking to have abortions. While I identified the most with the Biographer and the Mender, all the women are well-rounded and relatable. Like all of us they are flawed, yet filled with positive traits such as generosity, strength, and love. 

The story itself doesn’t just explore the controversial topic of abortion. It thoroughly peels back the numerous layers of how a law like this would effect everyone’s lives. It’s suspenseful and mesmerizing, and I read it in two sittings because I simply found it impossible to put down. The only reason I’m not giving this a perfect 5 stars is because I thought the first few chapters a little disjointed. But this quickly smoothes out and I wound up loving the author’s writing style.

Red Clocks true message is abundantly clear: Every woman should have the right to choose her own path in life. If I were to classify the novel I’d put it in the speculative fiction or dystopian genres, but because of what’s happening in the world right now, it also reads a bit like a horror story. Red Clocks shows us a reality that is potentially right around the corner, and that scares the hell out of me. I would recommend this to everyone, especially if you’re a fan of The Handmaid’s Tale, by Margaret Atwood. It’s a perfect choice for book discussion groups, and it’s a read that I guarantee you won’t forget any time soon.

Faller ~ By Will McIntosh – 4.0 Stars

Tags

Adult Fiction, Adventure, Apocalyptic Fiction, Mystery, Science Fiction, Speculative Fiction

Thanks to NetGalley and Tor Books for providing an eARC in exchange for an honest review.

352 Pages

Synopsis: Day One

No one can remember anything–who they are, family and friends, or even how to read. Reality has fragmented and Earth consists of islands of rock floating in an endless sky. Food, water, electricity–gone, except for what people can find, and they can’t find much.

Faller’s pockets contain tantalizing clues: a photo of himself and a woman he can’t remember, a toy soldier with a parachute, and a mysterious map drawn in blood. With only these materials as a guide, he makes a leap of faith from the edge of the world to find the woman and set things right.

He encounters other floating islands, impossible replicas of himself and others, and learns that one man hates him enough to take revenge for actions that Faller can’t even remember.

Faller’s premise is definitely unique, which is why I was drawn to it to begin with, and for the most part the story lives up to it. The chapters alternate between the man who calls himself Faller, and a man named Peter Sandoval, a Nobel Prize winning physicist who’s developed a technology which could literally save the world. Peter’s chapters are set in a not so distant future from our own, where World War III has broken out over depleted energy sources. These are truly frightening because you can see this coming to pass. Faller’s chapters are set in the aftermath of the mysterious events that led to everyone’s memories wiped and the survivors living on all these different fractured “worlds”. These narratives seem unrelated at first, but they soon begin to converge much like a giant jigsaw puzzle, answering the most burning questions including who Faller really is. While I don’t read a lot of science fiction, Will McIntosh is one of my favorite authors in this genre because I know I can always count on something completely different from what’s already out there and Faller is a perfect example of why he’s such an appealing author. While the world-building here is incredibly detailed and takes center stage, the story itself is filled with characters who are relatable and believable. What kept this from being a perfect read for me were several questions that were never answered. For example: No matter what world Faller landed on, everyone spoke English. And, everyones autobiographical memories were wiped clean, but they do remember how to perform functions like opening cans and using weapons. They don’t know how to drive vehicles or read though. This made no sense to me. There’s a few other burning questions I have, but I can’t really list them here without including spoilers. While I was frustrated by the lack of logical explanations concerning these, the rest of the book is so well-written that this didn’t spoil my overall enjoyment of it. Faller is a real page-turner that looks at everything from quantum physics to cloning, singularities, bio-weaponry, the ethics of using this technology and of course, the apocalypse. Somehow, McIntosh manages to juggle all these topics without slowing down the story one iota. If you’re a fan of science fiction and you haven’t been introduced to the incredible mind of Will McIntosh, I urge you to try him. 

 

Arcadia ~ By Iain Pears – 4.5 Stars

Tags

Adult Fiction, Fantasy, Historical Fiction, Literary Fiction, Mystery, Science Fiction, Speculative Fiction, Suspense

Thank you NetGalley and Knopf for providing an e-book in exchange for an honest review.

Synopsis: Henry Lytten–a spy turned academic and writer–sits at his desk in Oxford in 1962, dreaming of other worlds.

He embarks on the story of Jay, and eleven-year-old boy who has grown up within the embrace of his family in a rural, peaceful world–a kind of Arcadia. But when a supernatural vision causes Jay to question the rules of his world, he is launched on a life-changing journey.

Lytten also imagines a different society, highly regulated and dominated by technology, which is trying to master the science of time travel. 

Meanwhile–in the real world–one of Lytten’ s former intelligence colleagues tracks him down for one last assignment.

As he and his characters struggle with questions of free will, love, duty and the power of imagination, Lytten discovers he is not sure how he wants his stories to end, nor even who is imaginary…

Iain Pears is another author who I’ve been meaning to try but never got around to until now. Arcadia is a book that shouldn’t have worked. It has a huge cast of characters and alternate timelines and storylines that go back and forth between fantasy, science fiction, and even cold war spy drama. It should have been a confusing mess, but somehow the author skillfully juggles everything for 528 pages until the stories and characters are brought together in a brilliant conclusion. The three settings are: 1960s Oxford, a Scottish island called Mull in 2200, and Anteworld, which seems for the majority of the book to be set during medieval times. There are no less than ten main characters to follow. I know. Sounds complicated, right? While the chapters alternate between these worlds and characters, I was never left feeling confused though. Everything is laid out in a comprehensive fashion, which I especially appreciated as I was reading this on my Kindle which makes it tough to turn back pages. The only story I thought was a bit superfluous was the spy mystery. I found it pretty predictable and it didn’t really add anything to the other stories. Otherwise, although it doesn’t seem like it all these characters and worlds are interconnected. I didn’t know that there’s actually an app for iPad/iPhone users where readers can choose which paths they want to follow while reading the story. You don’t need this, but it is a fun app and I wish I had known about it when I started the book.

Arcadia is a beautifully written and ingenious book whose characters and stories will mesmerize you. Iain Pears is an author that doesn’t show his cards at the very beginning. Instead he lays out a trail of breadcrumbs to follow from chapter to chapter which makes it almost impossible to stop reading. If you’re looking for a book that is different from anything you’ve previously read, I highly recommend this. 

The Heart Goes Last ~ By Margaret Atwood – 2.5 Stars

Tags

Adult Fiction, Conspiracies, Dystopian Fiction, Relationships, Science Fiction, Speculative Fiction, Utopian Societies

 I received this ebook from NetGalley and Doubleday Books in exchange for an honest review.

Synopsis: Living in their car, surviving on tips, Charmaine and Stan are in a desperate state. So, when they see an advertisement for Consilience, a “social experiment” offering stable jobs and a home of their own, they sign up immediately. All they have to do in return for suburban paradise is give up their freedom every second month–swapping their home for a prison cell. At first, all is well. But then, unknown to each other, Stan and Charmaine develop passionate obsessions with their “Alternates” the couple that occupy their house when they are in prison. Soon the pressures of conformity, mistrust, guilt and sexual desire begin to take over.

“If you do bad things for reasons you’ve been told are good, does it make you a bad person?”

This is the question posed by Margaret Atwood’s heroine near the end of The Heart Goes Last. The events that lead Charmaine to this question are at times, funny and tragic which should have made for a thought-provoking read, but alas, did not.

Like in many of her previous books, the world-building is phenomenal in Atwood’s latest offering. Consilience (combines “cons” and “resilience”) is a bizarre community created by the mysterious Positron company. In many ways it harkens back to the 1950s with the residents only being allowed to listen to music by crooners like Doris Day and Bing Crosby. Their tv is equally sanitized. The whole thing reminded me of “Pleasantville” crossed with “The Stepford Wives” with a few elements of “Westworld”  and “Austin Powers” thrown in.

Contrasting with this supposedly idyllic setting are the residents who overall are obsessed with sex. It’s meant to be a black comedy but I have to admit I cringed at some of the scenes depicted, especially one which involved chickens which left me wishing I could scrub my brain. While I understood some of their preoccupation with this given their otherwise bland vanilla lives, at times it was over-the-top. Did I mention the chickens? Seriously, I think I may be scarred for life!

On the plus side there are some hysterical scenes involving Elvis impersonators which had me laughing out loud.

You’re probably wondering why anyone would chose this life, but you see, this is a dystopian story, and the outside world seems so much worse. The economy has tanked, leaving much of the population homeless, so to many, Consilience seems like paradise. So what if you have to give up a few personal freedoms. It’s better than living out of your car or on the streets, right? Well, it turns out that Positron has some sinister projects it’s working on secretly and they’ll do anything to protect them. Stan and Charmaine stumble upon the conspiracy and discover paradise may not be all it’s cracked up to be.

This leads me to the weakest part of the book. I truly couldn’t stand any of the characters. Not a single one. Charmaine is a fluffy blonde nitwit who whines, sighs and moans throughout the entire book. She’s also laughably naive to the point of ignorance and has absolutely no moral compass. Keeping in mind some of Atwood’s other books, I kept waiting for the big reveal that would show there was something substantive under the vapid shell, but was ultimately disappointed. Stan is a misogynist with a bad temper. That’s really all I can think of to say about him. He was completely one-dimensional and uninteresting. By the end of the story I couldn’t care less what happened to either of them. The secondary characters were equally boring and after putting my Kindle down to engage in other activities, I’d start reading again only to find I’d already forgotten most of the characters. It was extremely frustrating.

This is only the third book I’ve read by Atwood, (the other two being The Handmaid’s Tale and The Blind Assassin) and while I loved them, I feel I can’t really compare The Heart Goes Last to the full body of her other work. I do however know of her reputation as being a prolific author who excels at creating bleak, yet mesmerizing dystopian worlds with compelling characters. Unfortunately with this book she relies on raunchy humor to get cheap laughs. When you combine that with unappealing characters the end result is a tangled mess in which any underlying message is completely lost. Don’t get me wrong, this isn’t by far the worst book I’ve ever read. I think the main reason I’m so disappointed is because Atwood is a writer with such a stellar reputation. I expected so much more than an uninspiring story weighed down by frankly juvenile humor. I think if you’re a new reader of hers The Heart Goes Last isn’t going to make you immediately reach for another of her books, and I think that’s a shame. 

 

The Watchmaker of Filigree Street ~ by Natasha Pulley – 3.5 Stars

Tags

Adult Fiction, Fantasy, Historical Fiction, Speculative Fiction

 I received this ebook from NetGalley and Bloomsbury USA in exchange for an honest review.

Synopsis: 1883. Thaniel Steepleton returns home to his tiny London apartment to find a gold pocket watch on his pillow. Six months later, the mysterious timepiece saves his life, drawing him away from a blast that destroys Scotland Yard. At last, he goes in search of its maker, Keita Mori, a kind, lonely immigrant from Japan. Although Mori seems harmless, a chain of unexplainable events soon suggests he must be hiding something. When Grace Carrow, an Oxford physicist, unwittingly interferes, Thaniel is torn between two opposing loyalties.

This is one of those books that left me puzzling over what I just read. It’s an intiguing piece of speculative fiction that would have been the perfect read for me except for some of the characters. 

Thaniel is a telegraph operator for the British government. If you look at him there’s nothing that makes him stand out from any of the other single men living and clerking in London. Young Thaniel however possesses a unique trait–he has synesthesia and can see colors in sound. Life is pretty dull as each day basically consists of him going back and forth between his small apartment and work. All that changes though when he arrives home one day to discover a pocket watch that someone has mysteriously left for him. Things grow stranger still when the watch sets off an alarm which saves his life. After discovering the watchmaker is Keito Mori, Thaniel is urged by Scotland Yard to spy on him because they suspect he is the bombmaker. But as a friendship is kindled between them, Thaniel grows more certain that he is innocent, although he has to admit there is something strange about Keito and his clockwork creations, which seem to have almost magical qualities. And then there’s the question of how Keito is able to answer questions before he’s even asked. In the middle of all this, Thaniel also meets Grace who once she’s introduced to Keito, also becomes fascinated by him. Once she and Thaniel enter into a marriage of convenience though, she becomes alarmed by the influence Keito seems to have over her husband and decides to attempt to separate the two, using her knowledge against Keito’s powers. Unfortunately this causes even more problems.

Thaniel is a likeable character who earnestly tries to do the right thing. Although he doesn’t make much money, he consistently sends whatever he can to his sister in Scotland who has been widowed and is trying to raise two sons. He shows that same unwavering loyalty to Keito once they become friends. An otherwise lonely man, he becomes torn between his friendship with Grace and his developing feelings for Keito. I have to say I found him difficult to understand at times. He marries Grace primarily for financial reasons, yet almost immediately regrets it and winds up spending his wedding night back at Keito’s. While I liked his friendship with Keito and how it eventually develops into something more, he doesn’t seem to be very passionate about anything or anyone, and this takes something away from what otherwise is a charming relationship. 

Keito Mori is both a compelling character and a frustrating one. By the time I finished the book, I still didn’t really understand him or why he felt so strongly about Thaniel. It is his feelings for Thaniel that cause him to use his abilities, but it’s never really explained why he feels so passionately about this nice, but fairly unremarkable young man. 

Which brings me to Grace who I really didn’t care for at all. Despite my empathy for her being one of the few women educated at Oxford, I found her to be cold and arrogant. She is so determined to prove herself that it often blinds her to other people’s wishes and desires. And when she plots to separate Thaniel from Keito, well that’s when things really fall apart. How an incredibly intelligent woman could come up with such a reckless scheme is beyond me.

So, you’re probably wondering why I rated this as high as I did. Well, The Watchmaker of Filigree Street is also an imaginative and wondrous blend of historical fiction and magical realism, that has it’s breathtaking moments. It takes fantasy and juxtaposes it with cultural events of the time including the civil war in Japan, the unrest between England and Ireland, and the women’s suffragette movement. Natasha Pulley does a fantastic job combining all these elements and that’s what ultimately kept me reading. Well, that and an adorable clockwork octopus with a penchant for socks! I feel her debut is a bit flawed in regards to character development, it’s still entertaining, and I will definitely try another book by her.