Mini Review: Recursion by Blake Crouch
3***
I'm on the fence about rating this 3 or 4 stars, but it took be FOREVER to finish and a good portion was a bit of a slog, so I'm going with 3. While the idea was great, I found the execution to be a little lacking. The premise is, essentially, that humans cannot be trusted with the wild advances in technology that may be created in the future (or already have). Though this book is sci-fi, I felt this message was relevant and applicable in the world we inhabit today. We need only read the news to see warnings about the dangerous powers of social media, of AI, or more overtly, the threat of nuclear weapons, all of which are results of human effort. In this respect, I felt Crouch raised an interesting issue, and I also felt the protagonists Helena and Barry were well developed and interesting. Where my issues come in is that the books was immensely repetitive. In part, this is a facet of the story, but as a reader, you don't need or want constant repetition to get the point, you want a plot that evolves, right? I don't want to be too hard on it, because there were aspects I thought were excellent. Yet overall, it just wasn't quite the winner I hoped it would be for me. Sci-fi, admittedly, is not my typical genre, so maybe I am also not the ideal audience for the book.
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