This newest Justin Cronin novel is set on Prospera, an archipelago of three islands. The first, Prospera, is where the white collar workers live. They have jobs but are focused on art, beauty, culture, society, and law. The second island is the Annex, which is where support staff (i.e., “the help”) live. Prosperans have been genetically tweaked to be long-lived and also infertile. When they get old enough and their health declines, they “retire” to the Nursery, which is on the third island, where they are essentially reborn. Their bodies are renewed, memories erased, and they return to Prospera to be wards of their guardians (essentially their parents). Their bodies are about 16 years old when they return, and they have enough rudimentary knowledge to function and carry on a conversation, but they are still innocent and child-like in many ways. People on the Annex are just regular people, though. They are born, age, and die like normal, and their living conditions tend toward squalor.
For Prosperans, it seems like a utopia, but it’s also a police state, with watchmen and surveillance drones, which are also in the Annex. While Prosperans are generally happy throughout their lives and voluntarily retire when it’s time, they can also be forced to retire to the Nursery. They’re not allowed to change their minds once they decide to retire, and their health is monitored. If their mental and physical well-being falls below 10 percent, they are forcibly retired. Proctor, the main character, is a ferryman. He helps retirees through the process of signing the paperwork and getting on the ferry from Prospera to the Nursery. He also ensures that they get on the ferry in the event that they don’t want to go.
All is not as it seems on Prospera. There is an organized movement in the Annex of people who are tired of their living conditions. Meanwhile, Proctor is having dreams, which most Prosperance don’t do, and other unusual experiences, especially after having to forcibly retire his father. Most of the novel is narrated in the first person from his POV, but some of it is third person from people who are part of the movement and people who are in the government. If you’ve read this kind of book before, you know that there is going to be some kind of twist, that the mystery of what is actually happening and what this utopia/dystopia actually is will be revealed, but I wasn’t expecting what the answer turned out to be, and I really enjoyed the process of getting there.
Proctor became more interesting as the book progressed. For a while I was kind of indifferent to him. He seemed to be a mildly unreliable narrator and just generally not a very interesting person, and I wasn’t sure how much I liked him. I definitely wasn’t sure how much I liked him at the end. There are a lot of questions raised about free will and what it means to be redeemed, and Proctor makes some morally ambiguous decisions. He certainly became more interesting at that point, but also less likeable.
There isn’t much I can share without giving away the various twists, although I’m sure some readers will figure them out long before I did (I didn’t actually figure them out, Cronin had to lead me almost all the way there). It was a gripping novel nearly all the way through. I do wish a little more time had been spent on some of the decisions Proctor makes at the end, partly because it would have given an idea of whether Cronin expects readers to be on-board with them, but I assume he wants readers to be left reflecting. I fully recommend this to fans to speculative fiction, science fiction, and dystopian fiction.
