Recursion

TL;DR

I started liking this book but by the end I had to force myself to finish it. I's so weird, it's starts out okay, gets interesting and then drops to be so boring it was hard to finish it. I did not like this book but the idea and how it tells us the effect it has on people and the world is why I would recommend this book.

My Scoring System

I have five things I look for in a book, if the book checks all five it's a 5/5 stars book, if it checks none it's a 1/5 stars and everything else is a combination:

✓ - Main Story: As with [book:Dark Matter|27833670] the idea is amazing and even though the execution is far better I still didn't like it. But the idea is so great it has to be given credit.

X - Side Stories (if it applies):

✓ - Characters: Halena and Slade are the stars of the show, Barry is uninteresting. A guy who constantly cries at everything, had me rolling my eyes a lot when I was reading his point of view. He's probably the worst character in the book so it's unfortunate that he's one of the main protagonists.

X - Setting/Ambiance: It's just America, even if we are playing with alternate realities nothing impressive happens.

X - Ending: Not an amazing ending but it wasn't terrible. The lead up to it was horrible though.

Extensive Review

A bit better than Dark Matter, while on that book we had an incredible idea that wasn't used properly, here we get an incredible idea that shows us the consequences of using it. The beginning is pretty boring, then we get to the mid section and it's interesting and then towards the end it gets so boring that I couldn't believe I was reading the same book. Let's get off the easy stuff out of the way first.

- Slade and Halena were good characters, I really liked both of them. Always happy to read the chapters with them involved, sadly Slade only appears for about half the book.

- The idea of this book is amazing and how it tells us the effect of these alternate realities is perfect. Nothing bad to say about that just like Dark Matter, Blake Crouch's ideas are amazing. I don't want to spoil anything but if I had to rate this book based solely on the idea it presents it would be a 5/5 stars.

Now to the bad stuff:

- There's a running theme in this book, where people when they get these memories from alternate realities suddenly go crazy and commit suicide. I just can't believe it, I don't believe that you can be okay one day, you suddenly get these memories and a few days later you kill yourself because "you don't know what is real anymore". They all keep asking "is this real?" and I just have to roll my eyes, doesn't anyone in this book know what reality is? Reality is what our brain perceives so you're always in reality.

- Barry as a character is pretty boring, I hate how he constantly cries at everything. Yeah I get it he's been through some very grieving moments but seriously, every chapter with him I was reading he was crying about something.

- Minor thing but I hate when it happens in books. Towards the end of the story someone will tell someone that they can do something, they will have to work hard at it and it will be the hardest thing they will achieve in their life. Literally a few paragraphs later that someone does it first try without any problems or difficuly like it's just another Monday at work.

- At some point this book turns into Minory Report, while the book itself acknowledges it. And it's nowhere near as interesting as the movie.

- Before the ending of the book, the last fifty pages are so boring I couldn't believe I was reading the same book. It's boring because nothing new happens it's just the same thing over and over without any progress bring made. I guess the author's intention was to put us in the helplesness of the characters that they can't escape this loop? Well it was very boring and made it so hard to finish this book.

- Meghan is a piece of shit, she doesn't just commit suicide which is already a coward thing to do she sets a fire on her building killing three other innocent people, great job dumbass (it was an accident but she left her stove on when she knew she would kill herself so it's still her fault). I get that she wasn't a big character in the book but still a garbage character for what she did.

- MASSIVE ENDING SPOILER I don't get the implications of the ending. Slade killed Halena to avoid her finding out what she created. Barry kills Slade so Halena will eventually create the chair again. She has the same driven mindset as Slade so I have no doubt that eventually she will try to kill someone to get them to release DMT and figure out how the memory mapping works. Maybe if Barry tells her what happen in his previous timelines she will stop but I'm not sure...

I wish I could enjoy the book like the rest of people who rated it four/five stars but one of the main characters beeing so boring and a crying constantly, the Minority Report section and the lead up to the ending were so boring it destroyed my enjoyment.

I am not an emotional person and I’m full of emotion after finishing this book. Was a bit of a slower start but once I got sucked in, it was a whirlwind. Literally page turner where I couldn’t stop and needed to see what happened next. Fascinating to think of what is possible in the world as this book really stretches your brain (but not in a hard to follow way). You’ve got humor, you’ve got love, you’ve got emotions and tears. And you’ve just got a bunch of humans all trying to figure out the point of life and how to best live it. Beautiful book.

Didnt love the plot, the scifi was confusing and i didnt care enough for the characters to try to follow it better. 

This is another edge-of-your-seat mind-bender of a story by Blake Crouch, as good as his Dark Matter novel. His book poses the questions “What if something like the “Mandela Effect” were real, called False Memory Syndrome, and what if through technology the manipulation of peoples' memories could actually change reality?” He takes those questions and with some scientific speculation leads the reader through a nightmarish type of “Groundhog Day” scenario that ultimately may lead to the end of civilization. Romance and heartache involving the two main characters is woven into the story, but this is far from a romantic comedy. I couldn't stop turning the pages and highly recommend this book for those who enjoy speculative Sci-Fi thrillers.

At first intriguing, then just ho-hum with a lot of violence. Not what I was hoping for; made it to page 195 before throwing in the towel.

meh, forgettable

After absolutely loving [b:Dark Matter 27833670 Dark Matter Blake Crouch https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1472119680l/27833670.SY75.jpg 43161998], I had some really high hopes for this book. Unfortunately, it fell a bit flat. Even though the topic of this book rivals Dark Matter in terms of intrigue and interest, I feel that the plot to this story just a bit lackluster. I certainly will not stop reading Crouch's future books, but this is not such a home run as Dark Matter was.

I think this dragged on way longer than it should have. I picked it up looking for a sci-fi and got bait and switched into a romance.

Think I've found my favourite author. Dark Matter was very gripping, I couldn't put it down.

This one even more so. I loved it.

This book is kinda like Interstellar of novels. I didn't understand Interstellar that great on my first watch but now, it is a movie that I constantly think about. Similarly, Recursion is one such book.

Recursion by Blake Crouch is, for real, a page turner. If not for my sleepy head, I would have completed this book in a day rather than 2. This is a great take on different timelines. I reread multiple parts of this book to understand it better and I think, this is a book I shall pick up every now and then to completely get the science behind it.

If you like the concept of alternate timelines or alternate lives, this is a book you would definitely love.

4.5

A detective is called to a New York building where a woman is sitting on a parapet hundreds of feet above the street. He tries to talk her back. She says she can't live with the memories of a second life that flood her mind. She called it FMS, False Memory Syndrome.

The woman is not alone as an increasing number of people suffer from the same thing. The detective does some off-book digging and finds evidence for the other life the woman experiences. But then he finds himself immersed in the same experience.

Recursion is a novel of repeats. Repeated lives, repeated experiences, repeated trauma. Crouch has framed this SciFi theme in a new and well thought out narrative. The science is well done but the standout for me was the character development.

The detective moves from a man running from overbearing grief to somebody intent on making sure that what he experiences stops with him. The scientist is driven by her mother's dementia to find a way of stopping her decline but finds herself in a high stakes battle of wits. Another character thinks he's saving the world while his ego driven desires are endangering everything.

I found myself engaging with the characters at a very personal level. They were not merely shapes on the page but people with widely shared human frailty and struggles. And the wrapping of it all in an exploration of time and memory was skillfully handled.

Recursion has earned a place with such works as the movie Primer and the novels, The Lathe of Heaven and The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August.

This is brain melting in all the right ways and will have you turning the pages from start to finish. Cannot recommend enough.

I've come to really enjoy Blake Crouch's style of writing and pacing. It feels movie-like and has surpisingly grown on me. Also a plot involving some type time fuckery always works for me:D

Chic@s que libro más complicado... como alguien me pida que le explique el final no podría solo se que va de... líneas temporales y recuerdos y amor ????

La primera mitad es adictiva a más no poder, tenía mucho tiempo que no me enganchada a una historia de esa forma. Lamentablemente, a partir de la segunda mitad se vuelve repetitivo y sin intrigas interesantes por resolver. El final es muy malo, malisimo, pésimo.

A mind-bending journey which redefines the boundaries of how, who, and why we love. This one will stay with you for a long while.

Este libro me encantó a diferencia de Materia Oscura. La narrativa en este libro es mucho más entretenida, más fluida, cada capítulo te deja al final con ganas de empezar el siguiente para saber qué va a pasar.

El único motivo por el que no le doy 5 estrellas es por algún que otro momento que me pareció muy deus ex machina, pero tampoco es algo súper grave.

4.5

Look, I'm a logic guy. If you examine this book closely you're going to see a lot of issues with the “science” and there are some odd decisions that characters make that a real person wouldn't, but the themes and the method in which the themes are told are right up my alley and I had a good time. Gets surprisingly dark for a moment.

I actually finished this several days ago, but wanted to let it percolate a bit in my brain before deciding on a rating. This was not a bad book by any means (in fact, quite good actually), but it is a complex book with a lot of science-y type stuff thrown at you fairly quickly.

It's a tough book to summarize because of the necessary mess that is time travel. Essentially, a device is invented that allows the user to go back into their memories. Originally developed by the creator, Helena, to help Alzheimer's patients, the idea gets snapped up and quietly co-opted by her source of funding into something simultaneously more advanced and more sinister. Being able to literally go back in time to a previous point and re-live a life has predictably messy results on the future, and despite wanting to keep access limited, the word eventually gets out and Helena and her husband/future-husband/ex-husband Barry struggle to undo all the damage done to save the world from itself.

Right off the bat, I'm going to let you know that this is a very science-heavy book involving time travel. While I wasn't confused along the way necessarily, there's definitely parts of the book that you really shouldn't think too closely about or try to understand. Actually the reason I gave it 4 stars and not 5 is because it felt like rather large plot holes were hidden under these science-y parts, where as long as you don't look too closely at the seams everything looks flawless. There's also some rather jarring time skips (understandably) where a reader might be confused if they aren't reading closely, and a definite tonal shift as the book progresses and the late game kicks in and things start feeling more frantic.

But at its core it's a character-driven story about time travel. I loved that we spent time with Helena and Barry across different iterations of their life/lives together, and got to experience the different events that changed them subtly in each one. Additionally, we also get to see the changes in each of them as they experience these lives, with Helena (late book spoilers) getting increasingly disenfranchised with all their attempts at trying to undo the chair's creation. Rather like when you make a copy of a copy, each iteration of herself makes her more fragile than the last. It's a very human reaction/interaction, and I liked that a large part of the late book plot involved it.

Just a really good book, I'm surprised I didn't read it sooner.

Beautifully profound. Excellent read (or listen)!

This was my 2nd Blake Crouch read (Dark Matter) and I enjoy his style of writing. Dark Matter was good, but this book was incredible! The plot line is very unique and I was hooked trying to figure out how this was going to end.

I also listened to this via audio book and the reader was excellent.

5/5 would recommend!

First Blake Crouch boom.

This one hurt. But in the good way.

Consider me a Crouch-Potato.

Dark Matter next

I really, really loved this until almost the end. The last third of the book slowed down, felt too stuck on a hamster wheel (though I think that might be how you're supposed to feel). But I cannot stop thinking about this book!

10/10
I have no notes. This was perfection. I absolutely wanted to scream at the last sentence... but at the same time, I can't imagine this book ending any other way.