What Happened Next

TITLE: What Happened Next

AUTHOR: Edwin Hill

When Charlie Kilgore was a baby, his father killed his mother's lover, then stabbed her and disappeared. Now, 25 years later, his father assumed to be dead, all Charlie knows about the past is what he's been told and what he's read in old newspapers. Returning to the small New Hampshire town where he grew up, Charlie hopes to learn more about his father and that fateful day that changed everything by doing a podcast about the murder. Not surprisingly, no one really wants to talk about the past, especially his older brother Reid who saved them both from their father that night. Then an arson, a murder, and an attack on Charlie prove danger still lurks in Charlie's home town. 

As mysteries go, this works fairly well, with most clues revealed in real time through Charlie's narration of the story, though a few things he keeps from the reader until the revelation will better serve the story, which while it irked me, did fit the podcast conceit. I had a lot of theories, a couple of which I got right. Hill surprised me with a few plot twists, which is always nice. 

This was a quick, entertaining read despite a lot of rehashing of the clues. 

I Am Pilgrim

TITLE:  I Am Pilgrim

AUTHOR: Terry Hayes

Written a dozen years go, this novel about a bioterrorist feels relevant today, and even more plausible. The narrator is a one-time top operative for the US government who has been brought back to hunt down the terrorist he dubs the Saracen.

The book opens with what appears to be a perfect murder, then switches to the past to fill in the narrator's backstory, and then details everything learned about the bioterrorist, with the many elements in the book coming together in predictable and not so predictable ways. Overall, the plotting is well done, though I do wonder how the narrator learned some of the details he relates about the Saracen. 

The writing is smooth, and highly detailed -- in one instance, rather than a single sentence saying the terrorist filled a syringe, we get a 5-6 sentence paragraph detailing the process of filling the syringe -- which adds to the substantial page count. The straightforward style and steady pacing kept my interest throughout.

Reading an older book gives the advantage of a lot of reviews to look at. As has become my habit, I checked reviews on Library Thing and GoodReads and found many 5-star and 1- and 2-star reviews but almost none in the middle. The negative reviews mostly cited stereotypical characters and descriptions, and I can see that. The Saracen is an Arab born in Saudi Arabia, female characters are mostly described as stunning, and so on, and if that sort of thing bothers you, you might want to pass on this, but that's a small part of the book which has a compelling story to tell.

The People's Library

TITLE: The People's Library

AUTHOR: Veronica G. Henry

This was disappointing. I really wanted to love it. The premise is very appealing: a library where people can check out virtual recreations of historic individuals, or, as the blub says: "a digital collection of human consciousness." The protagonist is the head librarian of the People's Library, and that's where the novel's problems begin. Echo London is a bit of a cliche, someone more comfortable with books than people. She keeps herself closed off from others, including her colleagues. She has no real friends. Her life revolves around her job. Echo is boring.

Set in the near future, the story feels padded. There was a tech rebellion and then things got better but now the anti-tech movement is back, but we never see much of that part of the story because the book sticks with Echo, except for an info dump chapter near the end to fill in the back story of the antagonist. The prose is bland, with cliched descriptions, phrasing, metaphors, and similes. The plot revolves around Echo's growing attachment to the virtual people she checks out for conversations and most of the short chapters have a repetitive feeling, and by the end, it all feels so predictable. A Postlude serves as a caution that AI poses more of a threat than people think, but it reads like a lecture. A couple of ominous paragraphs would've better served the story.

I kept waiting for something interesting to happen, but it never did.

Beautyland

TITLE: Beautyland

AUTHOR: Marie-Helen Bertino

I chose this book to read under the impression it's science fiction, a label supported by kudos on the back cover. By my standards for science fiction, the book fails on that account. That doesn't, however, negate the emotional impact of the story.

Adina Giorno, born in Philadelphia in 1977, is, as the premise states, is an alien from a far distant planet, sent to Earth to report on humans. Adina sends her brief accounts via a fax machine she and her single mother somehow acquire. How the fax works, why the aliens answer in English, isn't made clear. When she sleeps, she enters the "night classroom," where her superiors instruct her. Why they don't take her reports then is never considered as I can recall. Other than her instructions from the aliens and their brief, often cryptic replies to her faxes, the book could very well be a simple coming-of-age tale of an alienated girl trying to fit in and failing.

The book is written in a series of vignettes, covering four decades, with Adina's reports reading like diary entries at times. Her observations of human behavior are incisive and poetic. And when one of her few friends discovers the faxes and talks her into getting them published, Adina finally goes public with her true self.

Ultimately, I believe, the truth of who or what Adina is is up to each reader's interpretation, no matter what Bertino intended. This is a beautiful, simply told story about someone who doesn't fit society's expectations, but it isn't science fiction by most definitions.

When We Were Real

TITLE:  When We Were Real

AUTHOR: Daryl Gregory

This is the third book by Daryl Gregory that I've read, and as with the other two (Devil's Alphabet and Spoonbenders), this is both entertaining and thought-provoking, and populated with wonderful characters who seem fully realized, which is somewhat ironic given the premise of the novel: Seven years before the story begins, an Announcement informed everyone on Earth that they're living in a simulation/virtual reality, with annual reminders to make sure no one forgets.

As expected, everyone reacts in their own way to this news. Some commit suicide, seeing no reason to keep living. Others become convinced that most everyone besides them is a NPC (Non-Playing Character). Yet others spend time wondering what the point is of existence and can life have meaning.

The story focuses on a group of people on a cross-country bus tour of the US to see the Impossibles, phenomena that sprang up after the Announcement and have no basis in the laws of physics that anyone can find. Each person on the bus has their own reason to be on the tour, some clear to the reader at the start and others revealed slowly as the story progresses. There's also an unknown narrator who starts things off by introducing the tourists.

There are Dulin (the comic book writer) and his best friend JP (engineer, dying of a brain tumor) taking one last road trip, two nuns and a rabbi, a nurse and her wheelchair-bound mother, a pregnant young influencer, a podcaster (who wants to prove the Impossibles are a scam) and his teenage son, the tour guide on her first day on the job, the veteran driver, and a few others. The wild card is the professor who joins the group mid-tour while on the run from a group calling themselves the Protagonists who want to kill her because they believe she's a 'bot.

The character development is exceptional, and there's a good balance between action and philosophizing, humor and seriousness, that makes the book move at a nice pace. The ending is a bit ambiguous, though one that might hit readers differently; for me, I think that's kind of the point. I might prefer authors tie things up neatly, but I appreciate being left with questions to ponder.