Through Book 1 Just through the first part , which is a bout a fifth of the way. Im hooked , this is good. Spoiler At first I thought Helena accidentally created this FMS disease. But after that first part, I think they just have people reliving their lives back in time? But are they current bodies just chilling in a tank in perpetuity? This shit is going to get wild. Cant wait to read more.
I did a really shitty job updating as I went. I just got hooked in and kept reading. Perhaps it's recency bias but I liked this more than Dark Matter. Dark Matter was more of an action movie while this asked bigger questions about life/universe ect. Both were great imo. Spoiler The ending seemed a little too easy. I wish it was a more ambiguous ended where he didnt quite know if he got back to the dead memory or not. To just have a quick epiphany and figure it all out within 10 min of overdosing seemed a bit too convenient for me. Otherwise loved it all and all the big questions of time, quantum physics ect
Finished last night. 7.5/10 Spoiler Similar to Truman, I found the ending to be too quick for what I was hoping. I became super invested in the story between Barry and Helena and was hoping for a way for them to both remember each other while erasing the dead memories but I did like how Crouch still kept it kind of ambiguous. The end of the world scenes are perfect for an adaptation and I feel like this will 100% get one - an 8 episode miniseries would be perfect.
Just finished Book 2, about 50% of the way through. Does it become difficult to keep everything straight? Loving it so far
Got audiobook on Thursday and finished tonight. Very good. Gave it an 8.5/10. Felt like the pacing was a little wonky, and didn’t keep me as enraptured as Dark Matter did. Was very good otherwise. He’s a very solid plot writer who has great vision, but Crouch really doesn’t write deep characters. Aside from main guy, Helena and rest of cast were pretty shallow.
I finished it the other day. Agree the characters are generally pretty shallow, but the plot was interesting enough to keep me very engaged. Not quite as engaged as Dark Matter, as cliche as it may be the wife/family aspect of Dark Matter was more emotionally impactful for me than the corresponding themes in Recursion were.
That shit was a lot. Enjoyed it. Didn't know how they were going to end it and I didn't particularly love it but I don't have any better ideas Really good book
Thinking about this book and why it didn’t connect with me as well as Dark Matter. Obviously as I mentioned, aside from male lead, other characters are very, very shallow and underdeveloped. I think the bigger issue was the book’s emotional climax happened way too early. Spoiler the world fucking ends in a nuclear apocalypse. Even after you run that back and Spoiler play Groundhog’s Day with the next section, it really loses the interest and emotional appeal from everything outside of that. If you are going to run that plotline, you need that to be the opening scene, a la Tomorrow Never Dies, then bring us up to speed on everything that happened to get to that point. Instead it came at ~60-70% of the way through. The last third falls emotionally flat and is thoroughly unsatisfying w/ “mini-climaxes” in the reveals to the resolution of the story. Meanwhile the denouement feels so weak by comparison because it is so far from the biggest climax of the story, among other issues with it.
Just got done with this book, and feel pretty much the same way. Overall, I think I like Dark Matter better. When I read Dark Matter, it was like nothing I had ever read. Reading Recursion, I had the feeling of already reading this general formula before. Still a very good book, and different enough from DM to be well worth the read. Big fan of Crouch.