Don’t think I’ve read anything by Justin Cronin before. If his other works are like this though, that will probably change.
When my wife and I end up talking about movies with friends we inevitably end up disagreeing about some and I often hear her say: “Yeah, but you like those mind-fuckery movies.” And, yeah, guilty. I do.
It was pretty clear from the start that this was going to be half sci-fi-ish/half mystery. Where the mystery is: What the fuck is going on?
What wasn’t clear was just how much we were leaning into the sci-fi aspects. Yeah, people lived a long time, and got basically reincarnated as soon as they died, but beyond that technology seemed pretty standard. No flying cars, no futuristic tech gizmos. Technically they had bio-implants but all they did was monitor your health. No on-board, in-brain AI assistants or adrenaline dumping performance enhancers. Nah, as far as cyberpunk goes this isn’t even vanilla, it’s like cybergrandma.
But that’s ok. It was clear this was going to be narrative driven. We weren’t going to be handed the plot in up-front action sequences. We’d have to be looking for it, at least a little bit. If you want to. Or, you know, just go along with the ride. Experience this strange Norman Rockwell / WandaVision world along with The Director as he goes through his enviable, if still somewhat humdrum, life as mostly satisfied paper pusher rather high up on the food chain. Soon enough the cracks start to really show. But long before it becomes obvious there are clues. There are hints. You can start to make some guesses and narrow down the possibilities. You don’t have to, but you could.
And you know what? I loved that. The whole book kind of felt like this internal struggle. Should I bother? Is it worth it? I could just not worry about it. But you know you should. You’ll kick yourself later if you don’t. And so you put in the effort and, holy hell, wait – is this… Hot damn! Yeah, ok. That was pretty good.