Synopsis:

In this staggeringly mind-bending speculative thriller for fans of Blake Crouch and Ted Chiang, a woman dives into her husband’s memories to uncover a decades-old threat to reality itself…

Maggie Webb has lived the last decade caring for her elderly husband, Stanley, as memory loss gradually erases all the beautiful moments they created together. It’s the loneliest she’s ever felt in her life.

When a mysterious stranger named Hassan appears at her door, he reveals a shocking truth: Stanley isn’t losing his memories. Someone is actively removing them to hide a long-buried secret from coming to light. If Maggie does what she’s told, she can reverse it. She can get her husband back.

Led by Hassan and his technological marvels, Maggie breaks into her husband’s mind, probing the depths of his memories in an effort to save him. The deeper she dives, the more she unravels a mystery spanning continents and centuries, each layer more complex than the last.

But Hassan cannot be trusted. Not just memories are disappearing, but pieces of reality itself. If Maggie cannot find out what Stanley did all those years ago, and what Hassan is after, she risks far more than her husband’s life. The very course of human history hangs in the balance.

Review:

I loved Binge’s first book, Ascension, so much that I was so excited when I heard he had a new one out this year. I am happy to say that it did not disappoint!

In Dissolution, we are with 83-year-old Maggie Webb, who has admitted her husband, Stanley, to a care home after looking after him for 10 years. Stanley has been suffering from memory loss that has slowly been eating away at all their happy memories, leaving her feeling incredibly lonely. A man named Hassan shows up at her door, claiming that the care home is responsible for deleting Stanley’s memories, not dementia, and that only Maggie can stop them from erasing everything and releasing something dangerous upon the world.

There’s a great balance here of science and emotion. The time travel and memory manipulation are complex and very layered, but Binge does a great job of keeping it understandable. Beyond the science, we are forced to face our moral codes, something all too common in science and laid out very starkly on the pages of this novel. As Maggie travels deeper into memory, gaining an understanding of just what is at stake, we go with her, and it is as much of an emotional journey as it is a scientific one. Binge has done well to connect us to her, so that we too feel what Maggie feels.

I loved Maggie as a character. She is strong and determined, and was excellent at playing the game presented to her by Hassan. Her relationship with Stanley was wonderful, their connection was palpable and grounded the fantastical science in reality.

I don’t want to go into the plot because I believe this is a book to read with as little information as possible. What I will say, is that it is superbly paced, and the tension bleeds off the pages and makes your skin prickle. This is the kind of scifi that I love – tense and complex, yet very, very human.

Overall, this was a fantastic read that I ate up in a day. Or did it consume me? It certainly feels like it did. I highly recommend for fans of thought-provoking scifi stories, and I am eagerly anticipating future work from the author.