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Book Summary and Reviews of Recursion by Blake Crouch

Recursion by Blake Crouch

Recursion

by Blake Crouch

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  • Jun 2019, 336 pages
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About this book

Book Summary

Memory makes reality. That's what NYC cop Barry Sutton is learning, as he investigates the devastating phenomenon the media has dubbed False Memory Syndrome - a mysterious affliction that drives its victims mad with memories of a life they never lived.

That's what neuroscientist Helena Smith believes. It's why she's dedicated her life to creating a technology that will let us preserve our most precious memories. If she succeeds, anyone will be able to re-experience a first kiss, the birth of a child, the final moment with a dying parent.

As Barry searches for the truth, he comes face to face with an opponent more terrifying than any disease - a force that attacks not just our minds, but the very fabric of the past. And as its effects begin to unmake the world as we know it, only he and Helena, working together, will stand a chance at defeating it.

But how can they make a stand when reality itself is shifting and crumbling all around them?
 
At once a relentless pageturner and an intricate science-fiction puzzlebox about time, identity, and memory, Recursion is a thriller as only Blake Crouch could imagine it - and his most ambitious, mind-boggling, irresistible work to date.

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Reviews

Media Reviews

"Crouch effortlessly integrates sophisticated philosophical concepts - such as the relationship of human perceptions of what is real to actual reality - into a complex and engrossing plot. Michael Crichton's fans won't want to miss this one." - Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"Crouch delivers a bullet-fast narrative and raises the stakes to a fever pitch...An exciting, thought-provoking mind-bender." - Kirkus Reviews

"An action-packed, brilliantly unique ride that had me up late and shirking responsibilities until I had devoured the last page. A fantastic read." - Andy Weir, author of The Martian

"Blake Crouch has invented his own brand of page-turner - fearlessly genre-bending, consistently surprising, and determined to explode the boundaries of what a thriller can be." - Karin Slaughter, author of Pieces of Her

This information about Recursion was first featured in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.

Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.

Reader Reviews

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Sandi W.

Your 'untrue life' ...
Thank you to Crown for allowing me to read and review this ARC. Published on June 11, 2019.

Another great novel by Blake Crouch. Having read Dark Matter a couple years ago I was taken by this author. I am not a great fantasy or science fiction fan. However, this author can twist that science fiction into something that sounds and feels real. Maybe futuristic, but a good possibility of being right on track. He hit the nail right on the head again with Recursion.

"False Memory Syndrome " is the current project of Neuroscientist Helena Smith. It was so named by the media because it causes people to remember an untrue life. There comes a point in their life that they remember all these memories of a life that never happened. A parallel life to their own, that finally drives them crazy.

Smith buddies up with a rich philanthropist to further her work, until she realizes that she has been taken advantage of and he only wants to use her invention in a personal selfish way and not for good.

Once she escapes from this bad situation she rebuilds her chair and numerable times under goes the process to stop and return time in the hope of saving the world before her opponent destroys it. Done in a very good way this equates to "Groundhog Day" with the repeating of this time frame again and again - with each time being spent in a different location.

There was some techie talk in this story, that might be hard to follow if you are not aware of technical terms. However, it by no means ruins the story or interferes with the flow of the narrative. For me it just advanced the futuristic feel of what Crouch made seem...all to possible.

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Author Information

Blake Crouch

Blake Crouch is a novelist and screenwriter. His novels include the New York Times bestseller Dark Matter and the international-bestselling Wayward Pines trilogy, which was adapted into a teleivsion series for FOX. He also co-created the TNT show Good Behavior, based on his Letty Dobesh novellas. He lives in Colorado.

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