Library Staff Recommendation
In a near-future UK, a private company has created a solution to the over-population issue. They have found a way to merge two minds into a single body. The novel follows two people that are a part of an experiment of merging a person who has a serious illness with a healthy family member. We experience this from the perspective of two people from this trial group: a woman with dementia and her adult daughter.
The way that the chapters alternate between these two characters was well used in this title, as the mother’s dementia progressively gets worse as you read. Gradually, her chapters become more confused and less coherent, so we find ourselves relying more on the daughter’s perspective to know what is truly happening. The mother does have her moments of clarity, however, which provide critical clues to the plot.
The mid-book twist was entirely predictable — the story could not progress otherwise — but I did not expect the twist at the end. The final twist made so much sense and was so believable that it felt like the perfect conclusion to the story. This is exactly the kind of science fiction I enjoy: it made me think about what it means to be human and examine the darker side of society.
4/5 Stars
Reviewed by Rebecca