THE FERRYMAN

5 stars out of 5

No matter what I write about this awesome book, it's going to sound like I'm a blithering idiot. At the moment, at least, I'm awestruck; after finishing it, I still can't believe another human could conceive such a complex story, much less write it coherently and so engrossingly that I really, really didn't want to put it down.

So what's it about? Well, in general it's a sort of "Soylent Green" meets "Brave New World" with a few other fantasy/science fiction works that played with our minds mixed in. The setting is Prospera, an archipelago that's a sort of utopia for residents. They live their lives for the most part in the lap of luxury, served mostly by "Support Staff" who live, some in squalor, on a nearby island known as the Annex.

Prospera's citizens have some kind of monitor in their forearms that are "read" with regularity. When their physical and mental health fall below an established percentage - which may not happen for many years - they are retired (voluntarily, for the most part) and sent to a nearby island called the Nursery. There, they are turned into what are called "iterations" who begin life all over again and returned to Prospera to begin another life cycle with no memories of their previous stint (or stints) there.

One of those iterations is Proctor Bennett, who as a young man was adopted by husband and wife parents and now, at age 42, serves as a Ferryman - one who personally escorts the retirees to the ferry that will take them to the Nursery to begin their transformation. On one fateful day, he gets a somewhat unsettling charge: the man he's to escort to the ferry is his own father. All goes well until the last minute, when his father suddenly balks and a fiasco ensues - Proctor must do whatever it takes to get his charges on the ferry, after all. But his father utters some cryptic words that are confusing and upsetting but at the same time make him determined to get to the truth, especially since he's been having strange dreams of late (and Prospera's reiterations don't dream). On top of that, Proctor's arm monitor readings have been dropping like a rock. How long will he have before he, too, must be traded in for a reiterated model?

As all this is going on, all is not well on the Annex, where the people are becoming unhappy with their servile status. Led by a resistance group called the Arrivalists, their unrest seems to be quickly turning toward out-and-out revolt. 

And it is here that I must stop, even though I've barely scratched the surface of this 500+ page tale. For that, I'll blame the author; you see, he's concocted so many - well, not exactly twists and turns, but rather angles and perspectives - that mentioning much of anything that happens beyond the first few chapters would totally spoil it for others.

Okay, did all that make sense to you? I didn't think so. Ignore my ramblings and go read it for yourself - you won't be sorry. Meanwhile, I'll just say a big THANK YOU to the publisher, via NetGalley, for offering me a pre-release copy of this mind-bending book to read and review. 

The Ferryman by Justin Cronin (Ballantine Books, May 2023); 560 pp.