Blake Crouch guides us through a narrative full of twists and turns, switchbacks, and–well, obviously–recursions, as he tackles the well-trod ground of time travel, bringing a fresh new spin to the topic. False Memory Syndrome is becoming a plague, as people find themselves suddenly–and seemingly at random–overwhelmed by new memories of a life that wasn’t the one they’d been leading up until that moment. These memories are as vibrant and real as the ones they’d had access to only seconds earlier, and the confusion and contradiction are enough to drive people mad.
One detective’s obsession with the often disastrous impact of these false memories and the unknown vector by which the mental illness is transmitted leads him to an inevitable meeting with a research scientist focused on salvaging memories for those suffering from dementia, as she hopes to ease the horror of that debilitating condition. Unfortunately, a wealthy and powerful benefactor with seemingly unlimited capacity to predict market trends and so much more has his own goals for the technology, and he’s seemingly two steps ahead of both of them.
Crouch takes us from the seemingly innocent and altruistic beginning to the cataclysmic end, as the truth–and reality itself–becomes a tangled mess of interwoven timelines. At once thrilling and depressing in the way it captures the worst of human nature, this is a must-read.
The narration provided by Jon Lindstrom and Abby Craden is fantastic, and they thoroughly capture the characters and bring the listener into the story.
Domus Necrophagous 