It’s been 10 years since the city of Pittsburgh has been decimated by a terrorist bomb but John Dominic Blaxton can’t forget his wife who died on that day. He spends his time, when not at work, in the Archive, a digital reconstruction of Pittsburgh where anyone can walk the streets and see the people they love who perished in the blast. During the day, he works for an insurance company, working to determine the cause of deaths of individuals by using the Archive. However, when he stumbles across a dead body that someone was trying to hide he is pulled into a mystery that is so much larger than he thinks.
I had read another book by this author, The Gone World (read my review here), and really liked it which is why I picked up this book. Unfortunately, I didn’t like this book as much. In fact, I felt like this book was a bit of a slog to get through. The book picks up a little bit in the second half and towards the end, but I wanted to quit reading so many times. However, I felt like since I had already invested in reading half the book that I should just stick it out.
I think my main problem with this book was that I couldn’t figure out the world it takes place in. It is kind of a post-apocalyptic world, but also cyberpunk, but it also could be incredibly opulent at times. People walk around with computers in their brains where they can log onto the internet whenever they want. They have implants in their eyes so they are constantly looking at streaming videos and being bombarded by up-to-the-minute news updates and advertisements – at one point the main character goes to San Francisco and as soon as he gets off the airplane his vision is flooded with ads for hotels.
But it’s also a world where sex and violence are prevalent. There’s a reality tv show that rates the hotness of murdered women. The president of the United States carries out executions live on the internet while wearing a couture gown. I just couldn’t understand if this was some kind of alternate universe or was all this technology and sex and violence a result of the apocalyptic nature of the bombing of Pittsburgh. I had many questions as to how this world came about that were not answered.
I didn’t care for the writing either. The writing was very disjointed. Sentences just end in the middle of thoughts and the author bounces around from one topic to the next very quickly. It’s clear that the author was going for some type of gritty journalistic noir vibe but it didn’t work for me.
One more thing – I’ve read many reviews that said the timeline of this book was in the future, but to me, that was never clear. In fact, at one point the main character talked about a Christmas where he got an Optimus Prime Transformer toy, which just screams 1980’s and 1990’s to me. I don’t know, perhaps I am wrong.
I thought this book had a lot of potential and obviously, I think the author is a great writer, considering I loved one of his other books. I could see his idea and where he was taking the story. There’s a lot that goes on in this book, but this one I just didn’t get.
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