Recursion: From the Bestselling Author of Dark Matter Comes an Exciting, Twisty Thriller

** spoiler alert **Time travel stories are tricky beasts. So often the author can be tied up in knots by trying to be too clever in their plotting, or simply by using the idea of changing the past as an excuse to propel the story at the expense of internal or character consistency.But when done well, it can give us a doozy of a story, and Crouch manages this magnificently.While he's been on my radar - and my TBR pile - for some time, this is my first of his books, and grabbed me from the get go. The idea of False Memory Syndrome dangled an intriguing thread, immediately making me want to know where this would lead, and the author's prose is as cinematic, fluid and immediate as any top-drawer thriller writer, the kind of writing that mostly disappears as the reader is simply immersed in the tale - but, thankfully, with a deftness of characterisation that is so often missing from these writers.He sets up the parallel tales of cop Barry Sutton, drawn into the suicide of a woman assailed by a double set of memories, and Helena Smith, a neuroscientist driven to find a way to recover memories as a treatment for dementia, and weaves them together in a way I honestly didn't see coming. About a third of the way through threads seem about to wound up before Crouch hits us like a truck coming out of the darkness with the real concept, sending the book spiralling off in recursive loops and increasingly extreme outcomes that could quite easily have felt too much had they not been handled so well.(It's around this switch where I found the only sour note in the whole book; Barry's character reactions just seem completely off, given that he has just remembered is while previous life and both losing and regaining his daughter, his actions and interactions with Helena seem unaffected by this emotional maelstrom. However, as this is just prior to the Big Reveal, I'm happy to put it down to Crouch perhaps concentrating on what is to come.)As well as the plotting and wonderful time travel premise (which is compelling enough for me to suspend my disbelief, even though I find it no more credible than magic or faster-than-light travel), the novel is fascinating due to the way the author writes character and uses the alternative timelines. That he shows Barry's marriage didn't fail because of his daughter's death, how characters are affected by their circumstances - even though Barry and Helena fit perfectly together and cherish the lifetimes they spend together, their is no clumsy hint of their being twin souls that are meant to be and will always find each other no matter what; having found each other, they need to make the effort to ensure they do so in each subsequent timeline, and this is reinforced by the ending that leaves open that, having now found each other so much later in life than previously, there is no guarantee that the people they now are will click in the same way.Another bit of genius is the idea of the "dead timelines", where the alternatives cease to exist except as memories. There's a debate in science fiction that the many universes idea as it pertains to time travel can both be used as a lazy get out of jail free card and can also represent a callous indifference to the fate of others, as explored brilliantly in the TV show Rick and Morty, where realities are discarded with abandon when things go awry. In Recursion, Blake Crouch explicitly foregrounds how going back in time to change things for your own advantage - saving a daughter from a speeding driver, rescuing a failed relationship, focussing on a professional project that you'd allowed yourself to be distracted from - will have repercussions for other people that you cannot even begin to comprehend and, while he could have written a story in which these repercussions remain relatively small scale and personal, I quite like the Roland Emmerich-type extremes to which he takes it.Blake Crouch has written a high-concept scifi thriller that drags you along and leaves you both open-mouthed and thinking. Perhaps it's not In Search of Lost Time or Solaris, but it is a damned-near perfect scifi thriller.Five well deserved stars

Recursion by Blake Crouch is a gripping, mind-bending thriller that keeps you turning pages. The concept of memory and time manipulation is fascinating, and Crouch does a fantastic job of blending science fiction with high-stakes suspense. The pacing is fast, and the story hooks you from the very beginning.My only minor critique is that at times the plot feels a little overstuffed, with multiple threads competing for attention, which can be slightly confusing. Some sections also lean heavily on technical explanations that might slow down casual readers.Despite these small issues, it’s a compelling, thought-provoking read that fans of Dark Matter and sci-fi thrillers will thoroughly enjoy. A strong four-star read.

This book was absolutely incredible; easily one of the best I’ve read in my life. It’s fascinating how the story completely mushroom clouds in just 330 pages. Didn’t want it to be over but at the same time was flying through the pages waiting to see what happened. Amazing book and would highly recommend.

This book deserves a solid 3.5 stars. The concept is mind melting but at times it feels like the concept king over other aspects of the storytelling. It's frequently confusing and a liffle hard to follow. I'm fairly certain there are some plot (worm) holes but it would take more time than I have to pick apart the complexities upon complexities you will find in this book to see if they hold water. Don't expect amazing prose here. The writing style has all the hallmarks of a standard thriller. It's written in the present tense (makes sense given the nature of the story) but it can be a little distracting at times. The concept is interesting though perhaps not unique. If you've seen Source Code then there is some crossover here. All in all an entertaining book with some ok characfers. It's hard to really root for them at times because ,given the nature of the book, you're going to lose a bit of the drama when your reader knows that there is a reset button and people who were dead in the last chapter may no longer be dead in the next. People compare this author to P.K. Dick. I can see fhat. Dick was great at concept but thin on character and needed filmmakers to come along and work their magic to bring his stories to life. That's not to say that this story is poor. It's perfectly competent. Is it entertaining? Yes. Is it a great work of literature? No. Is it worth a read? Yes.

With the release of his phenomenal hard sci-fi novel, Dark Matter, Blake Crouch engraved himself in the minds of many readers as a master of psychological suspense. Now, three years later, it seems Crouch has found a niche and is, to the delight of his ensnared fans, mining it. Recursion is every bit as phenomenal as DM and is sure to satisfy anyone who loved that book.The novel opens with Barry Sutton, an NYPD officer, trying to coax a distraught woman away from the edge of a Manhattan rooftop as she tells him of her pain at remembering a life she never lived. "My son has been erased," are the final words she says to Barry before throwing herself off the building. This event is the catalyst that leads Barry to further investigation into a bizarre, unexplained condition called False Memory Syndrome (FMS) which causes people to develop memories of things that never actually happened.His investigation takes him down a path of shocking discovery with implications that could change the world forever.Sound vague? Well, this is a story you'll want to dive into without knowing a lot. It makes the many revelations and twists better - the same with DM.With a narrative built around questions of memory and consciousness, I found the descriptions of the characters' memories particularly vivid and convincingly tangible. I also liked that the story was told completely in the present tense as it made the scenes feel as though they were happening in the present moment and helped bring them to life.Recursion is perhaps more relevant to today than DM was, as there are references to things like the Mandela Effect, deja vu, and a recent real-life experiment where scientists successfully manipulated the memories of mice. Because these are things that have recently circulated pop culture, things people are familiar with, these references add a layer of realism to the story.The stakes are colossal, the characters are the perfect propelling forces of the story, and the big reveals are placed at exactly the right moments. Crouch is talented at putting super complicated ideas - involving things like quantum particle physics - into words in such a way that they are digestible to readers who aren't scientifically inclined. Recursion does get a tad convoluted and confusing towards the middle of the book, but this is probably inevitable with the scale and complexity of the ideas within it.I hope Crouch continues to write more books in this goldmine-of-a-niche he seems to have struck. They are gripping and unlike any other books I have read.

This book asks: what would the consequences be for our society if people were able to travel back in time? I loved the realistic and thought provoking way in which the question was addressed. At times it is a little hard to follow, but that’s the nature of time travel. The huge disappointment however, is the final line. Honestly, if that’s how it ends, that final scene in the bar is a waste of time. Stop one scene before the end and you’ll have a complete and satisfying read that won’t leave you wondering where the rest of the book went.

Fantastic story. Gripped me and contorted my brain cells to the end.

Scientist Helena's life's work is making a memory device - a 'chair' - that can extract memories from the brain and store them. The purpose of this is to help her mother, who is suffering from Alzheimer's. Out of the blue, she is approached by entrepreneur Marcus Slade, who wants to fund her project. She little realises that Slade has other plans...Barry is a cop whose daughter died when she was fifteen; this death led to the break-up of his marriage. When his world collides with Helena's, the fate of the entire human race is affected.I admit to getting slightly lost with the science in this book, as I didn't absolutely understand how the reliving of memories could work in the way they did, though this is perhaps because I found it difficult to think of time as anything other than linear; I'd be about to grasp it then not understand the next bit. It amounts to time travel, as Helena goes back to her sixteenth birthday over and over again, in an effort to alter the catastrophic outcome of the technology that she created and Slade misused.I did enjoy reading it, and I liked all the parallel life stuff; it is clear that this book has involved an incredible amount of work and thinking through, and I love the way Mr Crouch writes, generally, but it's not my favourite of his books (my favourites are Abandon, and his collection of short stories, Fully Loaded). I found it overly complicated, and ended up just reading it as a story without trying to understand exactly what was happening. It has a good ending, which I always appreciate.

Great science fiction.

Blake Crouch is back, with another thought provoking mind bending novel that takes time, to travel through time and realise the full butterfly effect, or is that Mandela effect of what it means to remember.The story is well paced but longer than expected and broken into 5 "books". This services a timeline of events and makes it easier to read in order.That said what starts out as two distinct stories destined to converge - The send half of Recursion is more sci fi futuristic and all together linear changing up the reflections and mystery for straight up action.The last arc of the narrative is suitably repetitive while also stretching the credibility of its own ideas. There are points towards the end where it.just.doesnt.end. And then very easily it does and yet the final ending feels unfulfilled, it felt like so many threads had been retconned and left unresolved.If there is one issue with Blake's story is that he seems intent on telling a story of two destined lovers, and yet then totally ignores that poor wife and daughter of one of the main characters. The daughter especially is ignored in the backhalf dead twice and relegated to never being born, the wife an afterthought. I was expecting some resolution here but alas, at least the 2 main characters found each other again .Not the Notebook, or the Butterfly Effect or Looper this book does what Blake Crouch does best.Well worth reading!

Histoire passionnante, et l'idée de lier temps et mémoire est vraiment intéressante. Style clair et efficace, facile à lire même si vous n'êtes pas anglophone de naissance.

Muito bom! Parece que estamos assistindo a um filme. Bastante informações chegando o todo tempo. Muita tensão misturado com suspense pra saber o que vai acontecer. Tem até romance! Pra quem gosta do assunto "tempo" e as diferentes formas de ver o passado, presente e futuro, vale a pena ler. Final me surpreendeu, não foi o que eu estava imaginando pelo desenrolar da história.

It's been a long time since a book managed to leave me with my mouth wide open in disbelief. Several times. I can't begin to describe this one, but I can tell you that it's a crazy page-turner that ended up in my actual dreams and prevented me from sleeping. It basically ruined my life. Now leave me alone, it's 3:28 AM and I'm writing a review. Damn.