Recursion by Blake Crouch

Recursion

by Blake Crouch 

Hardcover, 336 pages

Expected publication: June 11th 2019 by Crown Publishing Group (NY)

Goodreads synopsis:

Memory makes reality. That’s what New York City cop Barry Sutton is learning as he investigates the devastating phenomenon the media has dubbed False Memory Syndrome—a mysterious affliction that drives its victims mad with memories of a life they never lived.

Neuroscientist Helena Smith already understands the power of memory. It’s why she’s dedicated her life to creating a technology that will let us preserve our most precious moments of our pasts. If she succeeds, anyone will be able to re-experience a first kiss, the birth of a child, the final moment with a dying parent. 

As Barry searches for the truth, he comes face-to-face with an opponent more terrifying than any disease—a force that attacks not just our minds but the very fabric of the past. And as its effects begin to unmake the world as we know it, only he and Helena, working together, will stand a chance at defeating it.

But how can they make a stand when reality itself is shifting and crumbling all around them? 

***

5 Stars

Wow, that is one mind-bending book! It’s kinda screwed up but definitely amazing.

Time travel books are always tedious and convoluted just due to the basic nature of the quantum theories alone. But this book puts a spin on the whole time travel thing. The people in aren’t physically going back in time. They are going back to a specific memory on a specific time line of one person’s life.

Is this book confusing? Heck yeah. I mean, consider the topic and just know that going in. I have read other books by Crouch (the Wayward Pines series) and you know just based on his past titles that this one is going to be mega and over the top.

We follow Helena Smith, a neuroscientist who has found a way to save memories and jump back into them. She trusts a not so reliable man who offers her the moon funding-wise and ends up screwing her over. Result?  The whole world goes to hell in a hand basket. 

We also follow Barry, a NYPD detective who had lost his daughter eleven years earlier. He is one of the first guinea pigs and they send him back to minutes before his daughter’s death.

This is a book you are just going to have to experience. If I tried to explain it all, this review would be ten pages long. Take my word for it. This book is excellent. I am fascinated by the memory chair and how it had such rippling effects in not only the main character’s lives but in society and the world as a whole. This is like the memory version of the Butterfly Effect. Once you cause those ripples, it is gonna take an act of God to set it right again.

I am excited to read another Crouch book. I think I have another in my Kindle Library and I will definitely be picking that up sometime soon. Even though this book is convoluted, don’t think it is a hard read. It isn’t. It is very smooth. It flows. Crouch does an amazing job of explaining all the complex problems they come across. And believe me, like I said in the beginning, this is a mind-bender. My mind is blown!

My highest rating.

I received this as an ARC (Advanced Reader Copy) in return for an honest review. I thank NetGalley, the publisher and the author for allowing me to read this title.