Back Cover Blurb for Recursion by Blake Crouch:
Reality is broken.
At first, it looks like a disease. An epidemic that spreads through no known means, driving its victims mad with memories of a life they never lived. But the force that’s sweeping the world is no pathogen. It’s just the first shock wave, unleashed by a stunning discovery – and what’s in jeopardy is not our minds but the very fabric of time itself.
In New York City, Detective Barry Sutton is closing in on the truth – and in a remote laboratory, neuroscientist Helena Smith is unaware that she alone holds the key to this mystery…and the tools for fighting back.
Together, Barry and Helena will have to confront their enemy – before they, and the world, are trapped in a loop of ever-growing chaos.
“In high school, in college, she was encouraged again and again to find her passion-a reason to get out of bed and breathe. In her experience, few people ever found that raison d’etre.
What teachers and professors never told her was about the dark side of finding your purpose. The part where it consumes you. Where it becomes a destroyer of relationship and happiness. And still, she wouldn’t trade it. This is the only person she knows how to be.”
― Blake Crouch, Recursion
I am narrowing in on really enjoying scifi thriller type books as my go to pleasure read. One reason I really like many time travel books is that the authors have frequently painstakingly laid out the plot and they have to be tight. This is not a book that was written by sitting down and typing out whatever pops into their head as a final draft. It is really difficult to write time loops without the repetition becoming boring, but when it is done well, it can be mind-blowing. As with many books in this genre, you have to let some of the science be fiction, but that is one reason I enjoy reading this type of scifi- it brings science back to its philosophical roots and then makes a small turn from the world we know.
You might think that the world of fiction does not need another New York police detective with a painful past, but I kind of like that this book starts with a trope and does something interesting with it. I might have been seduced by the female scientist that was absent at the beginning but took a more and more prominent role as the book went on. I loved the journey, the destination, and the people along the way.
I do have a few, minor nitpicks. Toward the end, things got kind of crazy, even for me, with the world ending over and over, but I got through that section fast enough that it did not detract from the overall story for me. There were also some characters introduced in the beginning that I thought would be a bigger deal but wound up being side notes. Overall, it was my favorite fiction I have read so far this year and I am so glad it was recognized as a Goodreads Choice winner back in 2019 when it came out.