Reviews with content warning for Child death - The Ferryman

A highly-detailed, well-crafted, surprising, tense sci-fi story!

The writing style really really works for me. I like that the main character is in first-person narration but the other characters are in third-person. I never got confused on who was talking, and everyone's motivations were clear in my opinion. This is a complex plot with a lot of "was that really real or are we being manipulated?" but that meant that the twists were satisfying because we never really trusted that things were "as they seemed" from the start. So all that stuff was really well-built-up without being predictable!

I thought the characters were also really relatable -- even the slimy, conniving ones, I can see why they'd be doing what they're doing.

There are a few times near the end where it felt a bit "everyone sits down and tells all their knowledge to the audience" but this doesn't happen too often to make any chapters outright boring or anything. I feel like the plot unfolds in ways that aren't too confusing but also not too predictable, and this is a hard balance to reach.

Cool, trippy stuff!

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bechkit's review

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adventurous mysterious reflective fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No

3.0

Personally felt the auther struggled with the classic show dont tell rule, and his female characters felt 1-dimensional to me. The storyline was pretty cool and I enjoyed the constant wondering over the reality of the world he introduced.

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lous_world's review against another edition

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challenging emotional hopeful medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0

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jaklindberg's review against another edition

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Proctor Bennett waxes poetic about his wife, how amazing she is, how in love he is with her, and the regularity of their sex life. Still, he cheats on her with a relative stranger (a 15-minute conversation over a cigarette plus a four-hour lunch does not make one familiar enough not to be strangers) when she goes on a business trip. Then, it turns out to be a dream state, so NBD shouldn't get mad at someone based on their dreams that would be irrational.

They wake up to find that in real life, he cheated on his grieving wife after the loss of their four-year-old child to drowning. It turns out the real-life affair partner is also pregnant, so. . nope. I'm done. That whole thing went out the window. Nothing turns me off from a story quicker than the garbage I read.

It is grossly unfair how Bennett gives the impression of familiarity of having sex with his wife with more fluid, respectful descriptions, but when it comes to affair partner, it's more fades to black to be more respectful of his time with her. Dude? WTF?

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jtemplin's review

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adventurous emotional mysterious reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.75

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nesscress's review against another edition

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adventurous emotional mysterious reflective tense slow-paced

4.0

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__l's review against another edition

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I got 75% of the way through this book and absolutely lost interest. The twist and slow reveal makes absolutely no fucking sense, I feel like I missed four chapters of context. I couldn’t follow what was happening at all. I hate it when authors make me feel stupid because I don’t understand the plot after the drop the floor out from under you. I made it through a handful of chapters and narrator changes after the big plot twist, hoping it would make sense. It did not.

What the fuck did I actually read?

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lizzie24601's review

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adventurous mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

Another stellar novel from Justin Cronin. His rich, illustrative prose is much stronger when he writes in third person - so the long-winded chapters from Proctor's perspective are a bit boring at first, but the narrative picks up once the plot speeds up.

As always, Cronin constructs interesting and nuanced characters and builds a complex and mysterious world that you can get lost in. I didn't see the plot twist coming, but once it did, I couldn't believe I hadn't seen it earlier. I wish we had gotten a bit more from Elise's perspective, and more about Proctor's

real world backstory prior to the Oranios launch

, but I'm happy with the pacing and where the book ends up. Strong recommendation for anyone who enjoyed The Passage trilogy or fans of light, realistic sci fi.

My one remaining question:

If only the Prosperans went to the Nursery, were the colonists in the Annex just... reincarnated? Because presumably they were living more than one lifetime as well. How did that work?

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