Brian McKenzie

The tagline for this novel is "Station Eleven Meets Never Let Me Go". The better Ishiguro novel to compare this to would be Klara and the Sun. But that's where the comparison ends, because, unlike Ishiguro's stunning work on the implications of sentient humanoid AI companions, this novel is underwhelming and underwritten. The novel winds it way through pandemic-ravaged USA some decades in the future following the travails of Lilac, a "companion" (i.e. android) with the uploaded consciousness of a murdered teenager. Lilac somehow transcends her programming, goes rogue, and sets out on a mission to find the girl who killed her. With (I think) 8 POV characters, the story weaves a braid of plotlines involving kidnapping, murder, corporate espionage and malfeasance, data piracy, love on the run, and the quest for self. Intriguing concept? Yes. Engaging story? Somewhat. Well executed? Well . . .

My main complaint is that the chapters have difficulty forming a coherent narrative. I don't get too hung up on episodic, disjointed narratives. Done right I find them fun and challenging to read. But something about this one struck me as unintentionally disjointed. I never really got the sense it was going anywhere, as though Flynn started just writing with a handful of characters and hoped a story would eventually emerge. The end, when it comes, lacks any sense of satisfactory conclusion. It kind of just winds up, like Flynn had a contractual upper page limit she couldn't exceed.

If I had to choose the best part, I'd have to say it would be Lilac's back story and her quest to confront her murderer decades after the fact. The other narratives at times seem if not pointless then at least obscure of purpose given the way that, upon their conclusion, they don't fully connect to one another. Their only unifying element is that Lilac is somehow connected to each of them.

I guess we could draw a few other comparisons. Altered Carbon which also deals with persistent consciousness through host bodies (though actual humans rather than androids); Black Mirror, the riveting Netflix series about what happens when our technological obsessions go bad; and even the recent horror movie M3GAN, about a sentient AI companion that goes rogue. And of course we don't want to overlook the post-pandemic dystopia novels of late, including Margaret Atwood's "Maddaddam" trilogy, Jeff Vandermeer's Borne novels, and the aforementioned Station Eleven. But for whatever reasons, Flynn's pandemic world is just setting, and of little significance other than providing a before-and-after point for the novel. The characters are a little scarred from the experience of being in quarantine (the reader can perhaps sympathize) but beyond that, once it's over, it sort of just fades into the background.

I note that this novel appears on a few lists of "pandemic reads" and it has a few favourable reviews. While I don't agree with all the good reviews, I won't go so far as to say it isn't deserving of some praise. My overall sense is that it's just not finished. Perhaps a stronger editorial hand and another rewrite to tighten the overall sense of integration and coherence would have helped.

Without knowing anything about the author or his previous work, my main impression throughout this novel was that it was little more than a fleshed-out script for a Made-For-Netflix thriller in the vein of the countless Harlen Coben series there.

When I took creative writing back in my university days, I was taught to think in scenes. Limit each scene to the necessary dialogue and exposition to move the plot and character development, and move on. This novel takes that advice and turns it up to 11: it contains 67 chapters in just over 340 pages, with some fewer than two pages in length. Deliberately cinematographic, the only thing missing is the slug lines for the camera operator, you know, "CUT TO:" or "CLOSE UP:"

Everything about this novel strains credibility, from the inciting crime to the funhouse psychiatric institute to the cutout characters to the deliberately murky overlapping plotlines to the secret diary that, as these things do, eventually exposes the truth in what is supposed to be a "stunning" reveal (CUT TO: THEO SHOCKED).

The psychiatric-patient-murder-mystery genre is crowded. Countless tv shows, movies, stories and books have sought to find new and clever ways of exploiting mental illness and using it as the cause of antisocial behaviour while the white knight doctor/therapist seeks to "cure" the malefactor with stubborn, uncompromising (if unconventional) treatment, even as the haters and doubters say "you're wasting your time, it's a lost cause". And, usually, guess what?

I'm not a spoiler so I won't get into too much detail about the tangled plot. I will say that it telegraphs its punches. I will also say that it relies on highly improbable events, coincidences, stock characters (EXIT: UNSYMPATHETIC HOSTILE COLLEAGUE; ENTER: GRIM-FACED DETECTIVE) and a ridiculously overwritten diary.

As I mentioned, I knew nothing about the author prior to reading this novel. After finishing, I see that he is a screenwriter, having at least two movies to his credit that are - surprise - suspense thrillers. He also has a string of follow-up novels that I didn't bother to examine but I imagine are also mystery thrillers.

If you like paint by numbers stories that eschew meaningful character development or examination of moral decision making in favour of plot complications and story hooks, by all means this is for you. If you want something thoughtful, respectful, reflective and even somewhat connected to the way things truly are in this world, move on.