This was our second reading group book from Stuart Turton, with the group having read The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle a while ago. This novel had a much more positive review from our readers!
The story is an intriguing one. Set on a Greek island, we meet an isolated group of villagers and 3 scientists. They are trapped on the island whilst the rest of the world is covered in a black killer fog. There’s been a murder which no-one can remember and Emory has to solve it in a few short days to prevent the fog from engulfing the island and killing everyone. Sounds good right?
This is going to be a book review with few details, because any in depth discussion will give away spoilers and we don’t want that! The first thing to say is that most of us really enjoyed it. One or two readers thought it needed to get going a bit towards the end, but the unusual premise really captured our imaginations. One of our number wanted a map (EVERY book should come with a map in my view), and found it a bit tricky to keep track of who was who at the start of the novel.
We noticed parallels with the TV series Lost. There were character names, the fog/smoke monster and science labs beneath the island. If you’ve watched Lost, you’ll understand (still not over the ending). We thought that the slow-drip of the key details was cleverly done, it really added to the suspense and gave us some lightbulb moments in our quest to solve the murder. Equally the time countdown throughout the novel added tension and gave us a definite ending that our characters were moving towards. Clever!
The book has a lot to say about the potential future of humanity- the descriptions of a character’s journey across the world to reach the island and escape the fog is a particularly bleak picture of humanity. We won’t say much about the omniscient narrator, except that it was different and added to the storyline.
At some point in our group meeting we went off on a tangent of Easter Eggs in books and movies, it’s amazing what we talk about in our lovely little group of readers. We didn’t mean a discussion about chocolate- find out more here.
In terms of the characters, we felt some were a bit 2 dimensional and there just to move along the plot. That’s not necessarily a criticism, but it was clear who was important by who was fully developed. We enjoyed the outcast Adil and felt that Emory, our chief investigator was a real Miss Marple. There were definite touches of Agatha Christie in the structure of the mystery.
For the most part we enjoyed this foray into the dystopian crime genre. Possibly a 7 out of 10 score. We managed to persuade the 2 attendees who hadn’t already done so to read the book. The books were kindly gifted to the reading group by the publishers so we’re hoping to have a copy back to put into our stock if it’s piqued your interest
And for our next book we will be delving into the life of the redoubtable Miriam Margolyes in her autobiography, This Much Is True. Copies are now available to pick up from the William Harvey Library.
Find out more about our reading groups here
Take a look at the blog posts for our previous reads here.