RECURSION by Blake Crouch
B&B RATING: 3 / 5
MOOD: If you’re looking for something to take the edge off while you’re pondering why your time machine doesn’t work, this isn’t it.
Synopsis
Scientist Helena is researching a memory mapping chair to preserve the memories of her mother who suffers from dementia. During her research, Helena is approached by multi-millionaire Marcus Slade, who offers her an open checkbook and unlimited resources to build her memory chair. She succeeds, though the chair comes with an unexpected side effect: it sends people back in time, altering the course of the future.
Barry is a street-smart detective reeling from a melancholy past when his world collides with Helena’s in an altered timeline. Understanding that the chair is causing multiple timelines, they need to stop it from getting into the wrong hands. They take a wild hundred years, reliving the same lifetimes to stop the chair from creating mass chaos, who knows if they will succeed?
Review
Filled with highs and lows, it leaves you bolted to your seat and churning with questions, which is the powerful thing about Crouch’s writing. He has the ability to reel you in, catch you, then throw you back out to sea for more. I love the slow build of the characters, and the way that every page turn was a new twist waiting to happen.
There are two completely different lives in the mix; Helena’s, a whip-smart scientist who will change the world, and Barry, a detective trying to make it by in the wake of his personal tragedies. Two people who seem to be complete opposites end up intertwined in something that can only be described as tragically beautiful, emotionally trapping, and an endless love-story mixed with sci-fi undertones, painting this book an abstract dream.
I’ve read Blake Crouch’s novel Dark Matter, and I have to say, I felt like I was on a similar rollercoaster with this one. They had relatively similar plot-structure, same multi-dimensional feel, and the story craft was also very similar. If I hadn’t read Dark Matter, I probably would have liked Recursion a lot more. I haven’t ready Wayward Pines nor seen the show, so I can’t compare it.
If Crouch put’s out another book, I’m not sure if it will make it on my TBR list. Sci-Fi really isn’t cutting it for me.
Drink Pairing:
A glass of cheap Prosecco to get you through, mixed with a greasy grilled cheese with bacon.