Harare Review of Books

304 pages.

First published in 2021.

Finished reading on 6 Sept 2021.

Genre: Uh, science fiction?

Blurb: Dark Matter meets Annihilation in this mind-bending and emotional speculative thriller set in a world where the exact moment of your death can be predicted–for a price. Our narrator is the most talented salesman at Dare to Know, a prestigious and enigmatic company in the death-prediction business. While he has mastered the art of death, the rest of his life is an abject failure. Divorced, estranged from his sons, and broke, he’s driven to violate the cardinal rule of his business by forecasting his own death day. The problem: apparently he died 23 minutes ago. The only person who can confirm his prediction is Julia, the woman he loved and lost during his rise up the ranks of Dare to Know. As he travels across the country to see her, our narrator is forced to confront his past, the choices he’s made, and the terrifying truth about the company he works for–and his role there. Highly ambitious and totally immersive, this adrenaline-fueled thriller explores the destructive power of knowledge and collapses the boundaries between reality, myth, and conspiracy as it races toward its stunning conclusion.

Uhh.

Thank you to NetGalley and to Quirk Books for this ARC.

This is the most baffling book. I was into it, like a proper physics nerd (which cohort/demographic is probably the target market for this), for about ¾ of the book; and then, everything fell apart for me.

The narrator is unreliable (I decided after a while). Much of the book is his stream of consciousness. The premise is interesting: he can calculate when people die, and then he’s dead (not a spoiler), but not. It’s when all of the possible science meets fantasy/myth that I lose the plot. (Cahokia/king and princess as mathematical solution/what??)

I don’t know how I expected things to go, but this book went all the way left, and you really should have seen my face when I skimmed over the last few pages. I feel a bit cheated, because the early part was so good that I got really invested. The rest of it–I really don’t know what the book is about, in the end. Have I said this clearly enough?

Sigh.

So, probably not for me. Rated: 5/10 for all the mind-bending concepts, and even for the protagonist, who’s unlikeable and weird in a good way. I guess I would read it again, if it weren’t for the extremely weird bits.

Such a nice cover, too 🥲