Holy babjeebus of holy smokes this book was wild. Intense, mysterious, sci-fi-y and inventive. Welcome to the sci-fi murder-mystery.
We dive right in as Hana Dempsey is getting released from breeding duty. She lives on a ship, the Noah, that’s on its way from Earth to a new planet thousands of years away. Breeding duty is exactly what it sounds like; it involves sleeping for 9-ish months while you gestate and birth a child, then get administered a bunch of drugs and back to work. No woman ever sees her child – and why would they? It’s way inefficient to love and care for your own child.
Hana has always been a gifted woman. She likes numbers and structures and has a great position at work, she has friends and a sorta-maybe boyfriend. But when she returns from breeding duty, no matter how many drugs she takes, part of her suddenly feels empty.
At the same time the sorta-maybe boyfriend, Barrens becomes actual boyfriend and stuff happens. He’s discovered a “crack” in the well-oiled machine that is The Noah, and the two of them set of investigating. This opens up a whole slew of weird conspiracies and the novel does a great job of portraying the various conspiracy theories and the underground networks that surround them.
There’s a lot going on this book, a lot of conspiracy theories that evolve and thread into each other with various degrees of finesse. Some of the theories were bonkers, others were plain old unbelievable, but most of them were confusing. Almost all them sent you into random corners that could not conceivably be tied to the plot
Spoiler: most of them actually were. So this book is great, wonderful, innovative, surprising and suspenseful. Sometimes – The Forever Watch does have a problem with pacing. It was either really, really good or sort of terrible. To read The Forever Watch one must accept build-up, build-up, build-up socloseyoucantasteit!!! And now! For something completely different. Repeat ad nauseum.
This book is a good read – good characters, good story, great world-building. If you can handle the suspense, the unanswered question and the endless maybe-not-relevant loops you’ll enjoy it. One thing is for sure: it’s quite different from anything I’ve ever read.
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