Not my favourite.

I’m a big fan of this author, but this book just didn’t work for me. It felt too disjointed!!

The plot was slow to really get going, and when it did it took an extra little while to get into because years have passed and we get introduced to way too many other characters that we have to try to connect with too. We start with Abraham and some volcanologists checking out a dormant volcano that seems to be showing some activity. His guide steps on a spike of some sort and Abraham tries to get a sample, but once he touches it, he gets images of a giant machine destroying the world. This machine has been woken to cleanse the earth because the humans have destroyed it. From there we get snippets of different peoples lives and what happens the world as the machine advances. It’s up to Abraham to figure out how to stop the machine.

That’s basically the first half of the book, then we get to the second half and it’s jumped 15 years (I think). Again we see snippets of life from different characters about how life is now. The machine is still going, still destroying, which I found odd because you would think that after years, it would have cleansed the world!! Anyway, enter Abraham, he’s survived and determined to see if he’s family has too. He also needs to stop the machine!!

Personally, I felt the flow of the plot was disjointed and I didn’t like it. I think there were too many characters to fully connect with, and not many of them were really likable to me, and I don’t know why! The author fleshed them out fine….there was just something missing. Plus the way it was told wasn’t my style either, we get first person present tense, then some third person past tense thrown in, it didn’t work for me.

In all, I still think this author is amazing and I’ll read everything he writes, but not every book is for every reader, and this was not my favourite one by him.

Jeffrey Kafer is one of my favourite narrators. He always delivers a great performance, is easy to listen to and reads well. I just felt that with all the characters, some sounded too alike to tell apart. I also found that he didn’t bring the atmosphere to life like he usually does. Still a great performance though!