Matt McAvoy Book Review

I had mixed feelings about this exciting near-future sci-fi, my biggest of which is the plot itself.  Whilst a somewhat interesting premise for a book, I have to say that much of it either wasn’t clear or didn’t necessarily gel into place – at least for me.  As always with this genre, the threat is an existential one for humankind, but perhaps in a conscious move, Tsui has mixed the fantasy tropes up a little, by putting a dragon in the middle of a Bladerunner-esque noir thriller.  In true Black Mirror style, though, he has made that dragon a mechanical, program-generated A.I. version.  At least, I think that’s the gist of it, for the biggest flaw for me in this otherwise pretty entertaining actioner is that some of the very premise itself became a little lost on me.  The general plot is that the dragon was created in a parallel dimension of sorts, and returns daily through a portal to kill a pre-selected individual, the direct consequence of this being a number of apparently random deaths which grows exponentially with each kill until it is enormous.  To be honest, most of the questions which you might be asking now I felt weren’t really answered, even after the book reached its end.  I did consider there to be a lot of loose ends, particularly in terms of plot answers, which was a touch disappointing considering that the book started off genuinely quite gripping and intriguing.  Don’t get me wrong, I liked the idea a lot, particularly of the judgmental apocalyptic mechanical dragon, but beyond this I couldn’t really tell you much more.

It is a nicely written book, with some great action and set-pieces, though in the second half – and more specifically the story’s last day – it did feel like it was labouring this a touch.  I think with work this could be a more appealing book, and much closer to Bobby Tsui’s vision, I’m sure, but there are those big questions left outstanding.  Tsui sets the location and the atmosphere well and his vision of the future is an engrossing one: bleak without being too defeatist, as this genre has a tendency to do.  The backstory, of a devastating pandemic in the mid-21^st century, is timely and sensitively portrayed, with human stories.  In short, Tsui is a writer with a lot of good to say, and it would be nice to see the book much more coherently articulated.  That said, for fans of the near-future sci-fi genre, this is not a bad book, with an interesting, high-fantasy-hybrid premise, and worth a look, though I would definitely like to see it given a good creative makeover.