Recursion

I don't feel like I can properly express the complexity of my rating without mentioning some spoilers, so please turn back now if you don't want to know what happens.

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This book was a hard one to review because I don't really have one specific feeling about the thing as a whole. The premise here is that a super rich guy approaches a scientist and helps her build a machine that can map and bring back memories under the guise that she'll be able to help her mom and millions others with Alzheimer's. An NYPD detective investigates a woman's death who claims to be experiencing memories as if they really happened. Turns out reliving memories in the machine creates a kind of time travel back to that memory which, in turn, causes discrepancies in timelines to become merged as the newly discovered “False Memory Sydrome.”

Chapter 1 - For me, this was a 5/5. We bounce around the two main characters where Barry's story is a sort of neo-noir crime thriller and Helena's is that of a sci-fi thriller. A woman with false memory syndrome kills herself (a recurring theme in later chapters) and Barry's curiosity leads him to seek answers. Helena is approached by a shadowy figure who offers her unlimited money for a research project.

Ch 2 - The reader starts getting answers as to what Helena's research is actually leading to. Barry gets an opportunity of a life time. Are any of their troubles worth it? Solid 4/5 on this chapter.

Chapters 3-5 - So, this is where things get hairy. I have to give these chapters like 2-2.5/5. Up until this point, there is a cohesive story going on, and Crouch really does his best on trying to wrap things up. It's not entirely his fault. It's just that any time someone does any sort of time travel, by the second visit, things fall apart. This sort of fiction becomes rife with inconsistencies and in-universe rule breaking. Also, because of all the damage Helena's machine has done, there's really no way that the book could have ended with any sort of satisfactory happy ending. The ending he did choose was kind of an ass pull to be perfectly honest.

Going in blind, the tone changes really caught me off guard. I thought I was getting into like a Blade Runner/Maltese Falcon type situation, but then Helena's story made me think it was going more Jurassic Park/playing God type stuff. We're thrown straight into a reality best described by Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five and even treated with a quote from the book. That quickly descends into a chain of events that gives us Minority Report into all-out nuclear war. I really wish Crouch stayed with the memory plot and less with time travel/paradoxes. I was happy to Barry's daughter come back and the complexities that arose, but I was rolling my eyes by the time he was married to Helena in a new timeline. That just didn't do it for me. All in all, I really enjoyed Crouch's writing style and would be glad to revisit something that hopefully isn't as convoluted as time travel.