I found this a page-turner and, as I was reading it, a bit of a guilty pleasure, but ultimately disappointing. I kept waiting for it to get better. To gel, to draw its various strands together, and turn into something greater than its various parts. This is "On the Beach" meets "The Shining" ⦠meets "And Then There Were None." With a dash of "The Bridge of San Luis Rey" and "Lord of the Flies" thrown in. So it has a lot to work with, and in my opinion, it throws it all away.
Jameson throws a lot of weirdness at the reader, and builds a lot of tension on the back of it, but the price she pays is that the reader â well, this Reader â expects payback in full for all this exhausting suspension of disbelief. And the payback, in my opinion, falls very short.
For a much, much better fusion of End of the World and murder mystery, see The Last Policeman, the first in a trilogy by Ben H. Winters.
Jameson throws a lot of weirdness at the reader, and builds a lot of tension on the back of it, but the price she pays is that the reader â well, this Reader â expects payback in full for all this exhausting suspension of disbelief. And the payback, in my opinion, falls very short.
For a much, much better fusion of End of the World and murder mystery, see The Last Policeman, the first in a trilogy by Ben H. Winters.
