I picked this one up after seeing a review by @authorallier. The concept is so interesting I couldn’t go past it.

In this speculative thriller, we follow a commune (5 individual minds inhabiting one body in 4 hour blocks) as they compete in games in a death park to win time to spend on upgrades for their body. When things start going wrong, how can you know who to trust when you all look the same?

As you can imagine, 5 people living completely independently from each other but in the same body, makes for some big challenges. They are all completely different personalities (the aim of which is to balance each other out, but mostly results in chaos).

Although a little bit slow, this story gets 5⭐️ - it’s a bloody wild ride and I definitely didn’t expect the ending. I’m an absolute sucker for a story that looks at ways to manage population control as a way of resource management.

Thank you to @netgalley for this ebook in exchange for an honest review

I did not like this novel. Just could not get my head around the concept and the opening was weak in my opinion.

Great concept - five people share one body - but the execution was lacking and I found myself losing interest as the book went on. Too much focus on the virtual games the characters play and the murder mystery just ended up being a muddle. Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC.

This review will go live at the link below on 24 August:

Hi and welcome to my review of Five Minds!

Dearie me, I don’t even know where to begin, this was such a mind-boggling, thought-provoking story!

Five Minds takes us to a future where measures have been taken to curb the population by limiting people’s lifespan. At seventeen, every citizen needs to decide what the rest of their lives will look like, and, by doing so, how long they will last: will it be short and sweet (all the riches, none of the work, but only until 42), rather long but lived in an android body (not requiring any food or drink), a tough life with no fixed expiration date as a worker, or a timeshare with 4 other minds in a communal body for a total of 125 years.

At seventeen, Alex, Kate, Sierra, Ben and Mike chose to become part of a commune, after which artificial intelligence brought them together. They chose a body (Mike’s) and timeslots, because these five minds never ever interact directly: when one is up, the other four are down. Their nickname “schizo” is both apt and wrong: yes, multiple personalities inhabit one body, but no, they aren’t really in there together, although they can leave each other messages. Think of it as roommates always just missing each other and having to communicate through notes left on the fridge.

In a world in which time has become a currency, the so-called Death Parks are immensely popular: people play high-stakes VR games against one another, gambling with their lifespan, gaining years if they’re lucky, dying if they lose. Alex, Kate, Sierra, Ben and Mike have been living apart together for 25 years when Kate gets an offer she can’t refuse: she can help someone out and win 20 years in the process. Alas, when a proposal sounds too good to be true, it usually is, and before long, one of the commune goes missing. And that’s just the beginning…

Five Minds is an intricately woven, high-concept speculative thriller-cum-mystery. It is one that requires your full attention due to its immense world-building, mind-boggling concepts and build-up, but it is well worth your time. With hints of Westworld and Ready Player One, Five Minds is pretty much what would happen if the creators of Black Mirror were to reimagine Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None. Incidentally, if the people at Netflix know what’s what, they should really pick up Five Minds for serialisation. It has a certain filmic quality and the kind of story that would translate really well to the small screen.

I had a great time with Five Minds, it’s a truly impressive debut, and I keep thinking about it, which option would I pick, would my choice be different now than it would have been at seventeen? If you’re a fan of mind-boggling futuristic thrillers such as Blake Crouch’s Dark Matter or Recursion, Five Minds should be at the top of your shopping list!

Five Minds is out on 2 September in all digital formats, hardcover and audio, with the paperback to follow in March next year.

Massive thanks to Viper Books and NetGalley for the eARC. All opinions are my own.

I chose to read and review a free ARC of Five Minds but that has in no way influenced my review.

Speculative fiction with a cracking, cleverly woven mystery to boot! Who could resist? Not me, that's for sure. I haven't dabbled in a lot of speculative fiction in the past but what I had read has been delightfully mind-bending and from the masters of the genre. Five Minds is no exception. Five Minds proves that Morpuss is up there with the greats. As my daughter would say...Mind. Blown

In a bid to reduce the ever-growing population of the earth, measures are put in place where at 17 years old you need to decide how you're going to live the rest of your life. But also, when you're going to die. The choices are simple: become a hedonist, play hard and die young at 41-42. Become a worker, work all of your life and drop down dead of exhaustion...at some point. Become an android, have your mind moved to an artificial body and die around 79-80. Or, the least popular option of all, become part of a commune. Five minds in one body, each taking 4 hours of the day as their own. Chose a host and then, 25 years later, chose another. But live for 141-142 years. That's the decision Kate, Alex, Sierra, Mike and Ben make. From the moment they meet, it's clear there are tensions amongst the group. When Kate makes a risky decision without consulting the others, strange things start to happen and one of the five disappears. Is someone out to kill the commune, or is the threat much closer to home...?

There are so many things to love about Five Minds. The author has set the action in a 'death park'. The dark and dingy death parks are where the desperate gather to earn a few more years by eliminating (permanently) their competitor/s in a game of skill, strength or smarts. I loved the setting. It felt grubby and somewhere only those at the end of their tether go in a last ditch attempt to survive just a little bit longer (only to be killed in their first game!).

The characters, despite sharing the one body, all stand tall from the page. I was concerned, at points, that it may get a little confusing but that's not the case at all. Kate was my favourite of the 'minds'. She seemed to have her head screwed on () and be the driving force, which I liked. I also really liked Sierra for her dark and dangerous edge. I shouldn't. She's a terrible person who does some pretty heinous, unforgivable things but I liked the juxtaposition between her and Kate. I felt they were opposite ends of the spectrum. Five Minds is very easy to read, either in one sitting or over the course of several. All I know is that I was always keen to return to this strange and inventive world.

Would I recommend this book? I would, yes. Five Minds is like nothing I have read before and I thoroughly enjoyed every moment I spent with it. Cleverly plotted and beautifully thought out. The author's imagination is clearly off the scale and I loved being part of this strange, new world. A pacey, intelligent story with a clever, twisty mystery at its heart. Effortlessly crossing genres, this speculative fiction murder mystery is a must read! I look forward to reading more genre-bending fiction from Mr Morpuss in the future. Recommended.

I chose to read and review a free ARC of Five Minds. The above review is my own unbiased opinion.

This is one of my most anticipated reads of the year and I was so excited for the mind blowing premise!
Five Minds is an intriguing thriller, and one that demands full concentration! It is not an easy read, and I found I had to have no distractions when reading it. It is a complex and high concept story, and one I would be fascinated to learn about it's creation from the author. How on earth does someone create a story like this?!
The characters are clearly well defined, athough I feel I would have benefitted from some kind of key or cast list at the start to help me. Without these, it took a while to get used to the language and concept.
With all that being said, it is an EXTREMELY clever and well thought out novel, and I cannot wait to see what Morpuss comes up with next!

What in all that is holy have I just read??! First up, I would give this book more than 5 stars if I could. I don’t think I will do this book justice but by god am I going to try….

A dystopian thriller which I can only describe as In Time meets Running Man, meets Hunger Games (but far more brutal), meets Seven Deaths but at the same time it’s own unique world of utter brilliance. I was sucked in by this book at the first page and if I didn’t have a toddler, I would have finished it in one sitting. This is, by far, the most compelling, immersive, intricate piece of mind blowing suspense I have read this year and I am experiencing some serious book hangover here.

The world Guy has created is devious, it’s brutal, it’s ingenious - and I need more of it. What a choice to make at 17 - do live the life of luxury as a hedonist and die at 42? Do you live as an Android and die at 80? Do you live as a worker and basically work your way into a grave? Do you give up control of your life (apart from 4 hours a day) and slot into a commune body with four others and live for 142 years as five minds…? (I did the quiz on Guy’s webpage, and as someone who likes order and control, I got commune - who knew!!) Anyway, back to the story.

I loved Guy’s writing style and I can’t believe this is a debut. His writing is whip-smart and punchy. The pace is uncompromising and will leave you in a soggy heap so keep up. His characterisation is on a masterful level - I may as well have been part of this commune for the level of investment I had in these characters - all five of them! Even the supporting characters brought so much life to this book - not a single character was a waste.

The suspense was layered brilliantly and as I got into the last third of the book, my twisted mind really wanted it to go in a certain direction - and it did. I was absolutely delighted!! What a humdinger of a twist at the end guys.

This is my favourite book of this month, it will absolutely be in my top five of 2021, and Guy Morpuss’ future books will automatically sit on my TBR. There is something seriously wrong if this book doesn’t make it into our screens. Do yourself a favour and read it!!! I will be recommending this book to whoever will listen.

Well this is a tricky review to write! This book was about as different as a book can be from my usual reading material, which is kind of why I picked it. So let’s see - it is definitely sci-fi although futuristic rather than of an alien or galaxy exploring variety. It seems to be set on a near future earth which has finally woken up and implemented drastic measures to preserve the environment. Accordingly the population is tightly controlled and people have set lifespans depending on what option they chose at age 17.

You could choose to be a worker, a hedonist (short but very luxurious life), an andi (Android) almost human body with your mind installed, or a commune. The commune is where five minds inhabit one body as in the title. They each get four hours of each day and their bodies get renewed/replaced every 25 years. Together they have the longest lifespan but can only live for 4 hours each day. It was a very novel concept!

This particular commune, currently inhabiting Mike’s body and comprising Mike (fitness fanatic), Sierra (sociopathic hedonist), Kate (sensible and clever problem solver), Ben (gamer extraordinaire) and Alex (pleasant enough former fat boy) decides to go to a death park to try and win some extra time. The story reminded me a bit of Justin Timberlake’s 2011 movie In Time where time was the currency of the day. So it is in the world created by Morpuss. The death parks give players the opportunity to win more time or die trying. The challenges are like virtual reality games. The risk to the commune is minor as they are very close to going into stasis and getting a new body so if they died it would only bring forward the inevitable. Yet they stood to gain quite a lot if they won. Little did they just how dangerous it could really be!

Most of the story is set within the death park with just a few flashbacks to provide context. It’s also told from the point of view of the five minds inhabiting this commune. As is often the case things do not go according to plan and it becomes clear that one of the five is plotting against the others. But of course you don’t know which one it is. They can’t communicate directly with each other, only leave messages for the others to read when their turn in the daily cycle arrives.

I have to say it was a very unique story, I’ve never read anything like it. I thought it was really well done and the author did a great job with differentiating the characters. They were all very well developed with their own personalities and they were all very different to each other. I can’t imagine how this sort of thing would work for real, I think it would drive me mad but it was an interesting thing to ponder. So with unreliable narrators and plenty of red herrings I had no chance of working out how this was going to end. It took me a little while to get into this one but when I did I started to really enjoy it. Thanks to the publisher via Netgalley for the complimentary copy of the book which I reviewed voluntarily and honestly.

Five Minds is definitely a sick and twisted story. The idea that the minds of five totally different people live in one body is mind-bending. I can hardly imagine that I could live like that. It was exciting to think about how I would choose.

The world-building consists mostly of the death park where 90% of the story happens. However I wasn’t blown away by it or the games the characters played.

Characters…Mike the fitness fan, there isn’t anything to like about him, all he cares about are running and running and weight lifting and his body, boring.
Ben only cares about games. Nothing really is known about him or Mike anyway so they are quite forgettable.
Sierra is selfish, mean, evil really. I hated her so much that I caught myself swearing at her out loud all the time.
Kate and Alex are the 2 characters we get to know the best. Alex seems like a nice guy, who just wants to be loved.
Kate is naive and she is easy to manipulate.

I’m giving 4 stars because the idea behind the book is fascinating and I love it when a book can induce strong emotions in me about characters, even if those emotions are negative.

All in all this is an exciting story, full of twists.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for my copy.

Wow! I wanted to read this book as it had been compared to The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle, which I loved. And I think the comparison is fair in terms of when you pick this up you know you are in a different World and something is happening but you’re not sure what. I also got the very same thrill in the opening pages from this book that I knew I was reading something special and unique and Five Minds is definitely unique, like nothing I’ve read before. It is brilliant from the opening pages right to the very end. It such a clever, well plotted story, that although yes it is set in a dystopian future you almost forget that as it feels so real, and normal, and the mystery story takes over. Every so often a book comes along that blows your mind, and you just want to tell anyone and everyone about it, and this book is it! This book is definitely a recommended read for 2021.

Thank you to the publisher and netgalley for providing me with an ARC of 5 minds.

This book was a departure from my usual reading material but I was enthralled by the premise and I'm certainly pleased I did.

The book can be a little confusing at first as we are plunged head first into 4 hour sections of time and different narrators. This doesn't detract from the story though and the first half of the book is fantastic. Our narrators find themselves in a death park, competing for time when a unusual glitch occurs which totally destroys the regimented communal mind and this rogue element seizes control with obvious terrible results.

In my opinion the second half of the book doesn't quite have the same ingenuity or pace of the first half and it does feel as though the ending was very rushed. Despite this I did enjoy the whole novel and would recommend it.

Five Minds By Guy Morpuss

In the not so distance future Earth's growing population has become a problem and Lifespans are limited to eighty years and here our story begins.

I loved the start of the book getting to know all the minds that inhabit the body and how things worked this was really good writing, the world building was really strong and had a unique atmosphere that I enjoyed and the whodunit element of the book was also really well thought out and enjoyable that I didn't guess so this was also a bonus.

So why the slight negativity in this review?

I found the book relied to heavily on the games in the death park and it started to feel like a bit of a poor mans Ready Player One which I'm a huge fan of so after a couple of the games I started to get a little bored and the book started to become a little repetitive for me.

Overall this is a good read just not a great one I did enjoy spending time with this book and I shall look out for more works from the Author.

Just about worth your time and hard-earned cash.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for this ARC I also like to thank Guy for allowing me to spend time in his creation in return for an honest review.

Some high-concept sci-fi consists of a brilliant idea and little more. It might explore a thought-provoking theme of social significance, but the central conceit falls flat because the author can’t actually tell a good story or create convincing characters. Happily, Guy Morpuss anchors his not-too-distant future in an assembly of engaging personalities – five individuals who quite literally share headspace. And then spins an outrageously enjoyable story which absolutely hammers along.
In this over-populated future, you can live a time-limited natural life or opt to inhabit an android body (which uses less resources than a human person). Or live your life four hours at a time, sharing a single body as a Commune with five minds. The story is revealed from each distinct perspective, as their shared existence rapidly unravels in a tangled tumult of increasing risk and reward. Our protagonists are initially playing for a slightly extended slice of life – and they think they have little to lose – but they’re manipulated into deadly games with far higher stakes. Someone is trying to kill them, and they can’t even trust each other…
Events are told in short chapters from each person’s perspective, a wily destabilising device which speeds the story and adds all the uncertainty of an unreliable narrator to the mix. If we don’t share head-space with a particular character then we really don’t know quite what has happened in the previous four hours, which neatly builds suspense and adds to the overall mystery.
Morpuss also skilfully delivers five fully-fleshed personalities – people you’re intrigued to spend time with; conflicted, complicated and definitely not to be taken at face value. At moments, it can feel a little like you’re trapped in a first-person RPG, mind.
The result is an innovative and inventive sci-fi thriller. Five Minds weaves and whirls in bewilderingly unpredictable directions. The ending might be its weakest aspect – there’s perhaps one twist too many in the mix – but the author confidently pulls together a complex net of plot threads into a hugely satisfying read.
Loved it. More please!
9/10

Five Minds by Guy Morpuss is a futuristic imagining of a possible life for the human race, when resources on Earth have run low and people need to find a new way to survive without overstretching the planet's scarce resources.

At age seventeen every person is asked to choose how they will live the rest of their life. Will they become a worker and live a natural life span? A hedonist, dead at 42 but with a life of leisure and pleasure? An android, given 80 years to live in a synthetic body? Or the rarest choice of all, a commune, where five minds are put into one body and take turns with that body in a sort of mental timeshare agreement?

The book follows the path of one commune, Alex, Kate, Sierra, Ben and Mike. They all live in Mike's body and get 4 hours per day to live their lives. The commune has gone to a death park, where players from all the categories compete in deadly games to try and earn more lifespan.
But one of the commune accepts a strange offer from an android, who turns out to be not all she seems and the commune has to work together, in their four hour slots to survive. They have already been together for 25 years and not everyone in the commune has the best interests of the others at heart.

I found this book fascinating, it was so imaginative, and all readers will be putting their seventeen year old selves in that position of having to choose how you would live out the rest of your life. Each of the commune characters was really individual and well thought out, and I felt I had a real sense of each of them. The world of the death park was also fascinating, and you got a real sense of the regret that some of the competitors had with their choice as they fought to hold onto scraps of life and extend their agreed lifespan beyond their allotted time.

Despite the androids and the death parks what was really apparent in this book was the humanity, all of human life was here and vividly represented. I loved it and would highly recommend.

When I first read about this book I immediately knew I wanted to read it because it sounded so different and I was intrigued by the plot line so I was thrilled to get the ARC and wow what a read it turned out to be it completely blew my mind!
So five minds, one body and one killer that’s enough just to start you thinking but this book just took over my life from first starting it it’s like nothing I have read before and I was obsessed with it all the way through it was a truly compulsive read.
The characters were brilliant and the games and puzzles oh my I loved them it was fantastic to try and work them out and guess what to do next or what move to make .
Impossible to describe this book as it’s just a unique and clever read I can’t fault anything about it except that it had to end and I’m already looking forward to the next book from this brilliant author and it’s a book not to be missed.
A massive thanks to Guy Morpuss you took over my mind with your words and twisted it round and round, gave me so much enjoyment I loved everything about it, it deserves more than 5 stars.
My thanks also to NetGalley and Serpent’s Tail / Viper / Profile Books for giving me the chance to read the ARC in exchange for my honest opinion.

Five minds by Guy Morpuss is a dystopian novel set in the future. The earth is overpopulated so the government has given the choice to the people. At 17, you must decide how you want to live the rest of their life. So, the main characters in the story decide to be a ‘schizo ‘. Five minds in one body.
But when an offer is made by a woman called Amy Bird to do play some games in a death park and in return, she will give them an extra 20 years to live. Things don’t go as they thought it would.
Thank you for the publisher for a copy of 5 minds. If there was one book, I find hard to describe to review is this one. Don’t get me wrong this is not a bad book. It has very unique storyline and its very imaginative. How would you cope living with 4 other consciouses in one body for the rest of your life and only have your own time as a person in a certain time slot? It gave me mixed emotions. In one hand it was an intriguing story and had a great storyline and the other hand made me quite claustrophobic.
If you want to read something completely different to anything you ever read. Read this you will not be disappointed.

I really enjoyed reading this book because the concept was so new and interesting, one of my favourite genres is horror/thriller so i couldn't wait to read this once i found out about it. I highly recommend reading this it was an mazing book and I'm glad i read it. The plot was also amazing and i never wanted to put the book down.

Excellent in premise, mediocre in execution.

I really really loved the beginning of this book. Getting to know the five minds and understanding the concept. I wish we could have seen more of how everyone originally coped, but it was intriguing to see how they all faired after 25 years.

For the first time in my life I guessed the plot of a book, and that definitely underwhelmed me. I never try to search for the killer or unearth the plot as I believe that saps enjoyment, so for me to guess? I didn’t think it that great.

The writing was fine, overly descriptive and repetitive at times with unnecessary dialogue. I hoped this would be something that made me yell “that was so good!” but alas it just didn’t hit the spot.

This is an extremely enjoyable book, a twist on the murder-mystery genre where the main suspects share the same body.

The world-building here is so good that it would be a real shame if there weren't more stories from this world - from the individual characters we meet in this book (Doctor Bernard, and Godfried for example) to how they got to the point of wanting Death Parks or figuring out how to put multiple people into one body.

There are multiple twists and turns in this story, and annoyingly I realised the final twist right before it was revealed.

This book breaks the mould for this genre, and numerous others too. Recommended for people who enjoy reading

Here at Books Outside the Box, we love a dystopia. We have recently included in our sub boxes Suicide Club by Rachel Heng and Dark Lullaby by Polly Ho-Yen. Like Suicide Club, Guy Morpuss's debut imagines a world in which humans are essentially indestructible -- but also considers the sustainability of the overpopulation that is inherent in this eventuality. What follows is an intriguing premise for a murder mystery with Agatha Christie-like twists and turns.

Guy Morpuss's Five Minds is worked on the premise of five consciousnesses time-sharing one body. Each is allotted four hours and, in return, they will receive a new body every twenty-five years and have a longer lifespan than people who choose other population-sustaining options. In this world, time is currency, and the protagonist(s) enter a death park where remaining lifetime can be gambled for the highest stakes.

What follows is a combined whodunnit interspersed with escape room narratives. Being a huge fan of both these things, this book was a perfect novelty for me. The different personalities housed in the single body are brilliantly realised, and the narrative is carefully written in a way that obscures which of the five knows more than the others (putting me in mind of The Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie).

Besides providing an exciting and intriguing story, the world-building in this book is truly excellent. Morpuss has considered so many possibilities through to fascinating conclusions -- from the question of population sustainability to simulation and the future of VR/AR to the future of currency. The book touches on ideas of post-gender (and post-humanism?) in a way I would have loved to explore in more detail, but wanting more is really my only criticism of this book. I really hope we get more stories in this world -- not necessarily with these characters, but exploring different aspects of this future from different perspectives.

With thanks to Netgalley.com and the publishers for the e-advanced review copy of this book.