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| ★★★★✰ |
Synopsis: Revivers. Able to wake the recently dead, and let them bear witness to their own demise. Forensic revival is a routine part of police investigation. In the United States, that responsibility falls to the Forensic Revival Service. Despite his troubled past, Jonah Miller is one of their best. But while reviving the victim of a brutal murder, he encounters a terrifying presence. Then Daniel Harker, the first journalist to bring revival to public attention, is murdered. Working with Harker's daughter Annabel, he becomes determined to find those responsible and bring them to justice. Soon they uncover long-hidden truths that call into doubt everything Jonah stands for, and reveal a threat that if not stopped in time, will put all of humanity in danger ...
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Review: This book was a little bit of a mixed bag for me - I absolutely loved quite a lot about it, but much of what I loved was ultimately a little too dense or drawn out and resulted in occasional bouts of slight tedium.
For the first 50-80 pages or so I was absolutely riveted. I love the premise, I love how detailed and real-world it seems - reading much more like a realistic thriller than a supernatural or science fiction fantasy combo. Having not read the synopsis, I wasn't actually expecting Daniel Harker's fate and was both shocked and intrigued by spending pages learning all about a character who ends up the way he does. Some of the characters are interesting, others (unfortunately including Jonah) are a little bleh and felt much more like narrative vehicles than fully-fleshed out characters. That said, this isn't exactly a character-driven novel and the story and context are really exciting. I did feel that despite everything going on, the progression of the core plot - finding out the nature of the entity Jonah saw (or which saw him!) during a revival - was a bit too slow, lost admist exposition, and about two thirds of the way through the novel I felt it start to drag.
Then, it perked up again, when it launched into its final descent towards the end. It teeters on the line between pure science fiction and the supernatural - and I'm still not entirely sure which it is, but I am really curious to find out. Curious enough to pick up the second novel? Wellll I've heard that second one is arguably better than the first, so I might give it a go.
Rating: 4/5
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