When Roland wakes up in a motel with two identities (according to the contents of his wallet) and a dead woman in the bathroom, he wracks his brain to remember what has happened. The vial of pills labelled "Take one every 4 hours or else" clouds the picture further. Porn actress Anita has the same tablets and an encounter of her own that gets the heart racing. When they are reunited with the other survivors of an unauthorised drug trial the battle is on. They all want to take control of the pills that are helping keep them sane and stop them remembering what happened ten years earlier.I have read other books by the author in the past and enjoyed them so was looking forward to getting into this. The premise sounded interesting, a botched drug trial that had left a group of people on the edge and despite this the interest of certain parties in developing the drug for military application. It sounded feasible enough to be scary, particularly in the hands of Mr Nicholson.
However I finished it feeling a bit apathetic about the whole thing. The point of view kept switching between a number of characters and I didn't feel like I knew much about any of them. The female characters felt slightly more fleshed out but only because there were chunks devoted to their sexual pasts.
I also had a lot of questions that could have easily been answered in the course of the book. For example the group are all described as sociopaths but it's never made clear whether that is a result of the drugs or if they were chosen for the trial for a personality trait common to sociopaths in the first place. As it is mentioned a few times it would have been nice to know.
With a lack of interest in the fate of the characters the tension that was being built fell flat, and I felt some threads were under-developed with scope for much more about the political forces supporting the mad scientist's research and its potential applications.
I was a bit disappointed in this book after having read Scott's other work, so it's just an "okay" from me.
Format: Kindle, review copy
Publisher: Thomas and Mercer
My Rating: 2*
2 comments:
I just started reading and enjoying Disintegration by Scott Nicholson - although I have some issues with it - and this one is on my list - not sure if your review has put me off or made me more curious though!
You'll have to let me know what you think of that one, not it read it myself. The others I've read have all had more of a paranormal bent so this was a bit different.
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