Immortality, by Kevin Bohacz
Book Review by SJ Higbee
This doomsday tale of changing times and humanity's attempts to adjust has an old-fashioned feel about it. The constant swinging between a very wide cast of characters -- all told in third person POV -- harks back to Michael Crichton's The Andromeda Strain in atmosphere and treatment. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing. However, in order to make this particular storyline structure work, the author has to tread a very fine line between keeping up the pace, without confusing his reader with a dizzying procession of characters and events. Bohacz manages not to confuse, but at the expense of the narrative drive, particularly in the first section. I felt he could have shed many of the early episodes without losing much of the plot, while gaining pace and keeping the key characters to the fore.
But as the narrative picks up and the main characters clearly emerge from the incidental clutter, the science fiction aspects of the storyline gripped me sufficiently to keep me engrossed for the duration. Once he gets into his stride, Bohacz's depiction of the despair and chaos as civilisation crashes and the differing reactions of his characters are entirely plausible; as are the more extreme edges of his hypothesis accounting for the main extinction events that have dotted Earth's history. Bohacz's writing style isn't flashy. There are no shafts of sharp humour, or displays of wordplay. But his painstaking, detailed accounts of the changes afflicting his main four protagonists are riveting and horrifying in equal measure.
After a sticky start, this book manages to do what all the best sci-fi does -- provide a thought-provoking, alternative viewpoint on the business of existence. I recommend you give it a go.
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