Synopsis
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.
Review
This book caught my attention for its name. A recursive routine in computer programming is a block of code that runs itself over and over. Curious to see how that might play out in fiction, I gave this book a try.
Time seems to be looping. People remember out of the blue entire lives they have never lived. Or did they? Many–most–can’t deal and kill themselves. Or do they? With every loop, more people remember more lives–and deaths. As reality comes undone our intrepid heroes, Barry and Helena, try again and again to stop the recursion only to fail again and again. Eventually they stand before nothing less than an apocalypse which is (fair warning) depicted in terrifying detail. Along the way their relationship grows and regrows and other relationships shift and change. Old regrets are prevented while new ones blossom.
The looping timeline has a beat to it that mirrors the reader’s heartrate as it goes along–slow and casual at first, then escalating to breathless, eventually reaching a burst-out-of-your-chest crescendo. Amazingly the story is easy to follow in spite of the constant shifting and some occasionally dense forays into quantum physics. As is true of all the best science fiction, however, it’s not the science that makes this book worthy of 5 stars. It’s the ever-tightening circles of action and the accompanying emotion that grip the reader and squeezes us breathless right up to the astonishing and highly satisfying end.