The Ferryman is already making waves - all the good ones, unlike the many captured in this tumultuous adventure, where our titular protagonist must overcome impossible odds many times over, before he can even imagine sailing into the proverbial calm, golden sunset.

Not having read Mr. Cronin's earlier works, I didn't quite know what to expect - save for a few rave advance praises. The plot seemed intriguing, and I was hooked. Rightly so.

The Ferryman of the title refers to Proctor Bennett, who is The Director and a Ferryman (I know, unlikely combination!) at the prosperous and therefore rather aptly named island state of Prospera. Life is uncannily like contemporary early 21st century Earth, though somewhere rather affluent, where the rich enjoy Operas and Art and Classical Music. Life must be really good, especially when no one dies. You simply go to The Nursery when it's your time, to get rejuvenated and sort-of reincarnated into a 16-year-old'd body, and return to partake in the delights of the blissful life that Prospera has to offer - but only to the Prosperans.

There's a rather scathing hierarchy built into this society - a whole working class that lives on a separate island called The Annex. With well concealed rifts that are constantly threatening to break the social fabric apart, you get to see Mr. Cronin's delicious storytelling chops as he weaves a tale with a rather limited cast of characters and scope to begin with (this is an island nation, after all!), but one that soon expands in ways - quite literally - beyond imagination.

Things quickly spiral out of control, with the Annex rising first in rebellion, and then in outright revolution. But the rebellion serves the dual purpose of cracking open not just chasms in the societal structure but also in the actual physical world that surrounds Proctor. The roller-coaster ride takes the reader through undersea tunnels, high speed car chases, to ... can't mention more without spoilers!

The much-talked-about twist is deservedly marvelous, and is well worth the long, winding but never-boring read that the book has to offer. The characters are very well sketched out, they are believable, and nearly all minor events and references are picked up and allowed to eventually fall in place to make a grand mosaic. It all makes sense by the time you're in the final quarter of the book, at which point the entire perspective shifts, and the veil lifts.

Though there were some rough edges I felt in the writing at times - especially when during Proctor's first-person narrative he adds rather incredulous questions onto his thoughts. That often left me feeling like it was filler sections, that could have done with a stricter and sharper editing. It doesn't take away from the story, but seeing how big the book is, those edits may have helped pare it down a notch, or two. However, to his credit, Mr. Cronin manages to make us empathize with nearly all of his characters. The sadness is real, their suffering is real, the need to reform is real - all very cleverly alluding to present circumstances of contemporary early 21st-century Earth, but somewhere rather affluent, and not so affluent as well. He manages to interweave a sort of parable into the story of the Prosperans, and I found it rather fitting that he quotes Shakespeare's Tempest on the title page of the Epilogue.

The ending and the Epilogue are especially satisfying. Towards the end, I was apprehensive how would a story like this conclude without letting down the sheer thrill and magnitude of its undertaking. The bittersweet ending does proper justice.

Thanks to NetGalley, Penguin Random House and the author for providing an eARC in exchange for an honest review.

This book felt a lot like current society and the split of generations with the inability to see what experience has on new generations. On the island of Prospera, everyone is safe. The outside world is in chaos. On Prospera, people live long and healthy lives and are monitored by an implant in the arm. Once the health level falls below 10 percent, it is time to retire. Memories are wiped out, new body, new life. Proctor is a Ferryman. He assists the retirees when it's time to go. Proctor has begun to have doubts about the system. Meanwhile, there's an uprising brewing in the poorer community.
Things are not as perfect as they seem.

It’s creative and is captivating with its unpredictable plot. The different settings, the masterful telling of this story and how different situations make this a book one the reader can easily relate to make this a book I would recommend for anyone on the planet. I thought it had a few really important messages.

Many thanks to NetGalley, Justin Cronin and Random House Publishing Group/ Ballantine.

2/5 stars

The Ferryman by Justin Cronin is a sci-fi thriller that follows the lives of several Prosperans and Support Staff - Proctor, Thea, Elise, Warren, and others. This dystopian world has recently become full of unrest that starts to lead to the inklings of a revolution. This beautifully build world that highlights the complexities of humanity could be facing some serious changes - but can Proctor uncover the truth and quickly?

This book really was not for me. While the world building and character development was very intriguing in the first half of the book, the second half had me thinking WTF quite a bit. I feel like the author took the social and environmental aspects of humanity to extremes, and I really just did not enjoy this book.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for providing an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

This was my first book by this author, and it won't be my last. I'm still not 100% sure what I just read. lol. This was a mind-bending blend of science fiction, mystery, and dystopia that constantly kept my brain spiraling. At its heart, though, it was a novel about the human experiences of parenthood, loss, grief, aging, and perseverance against impossible odds. It also highlighted the importance of taking care of our planet and explored how class dynamics can play into some of the worst aspects of human nature. There were segments of this book that had me so deep in my feelings and others that were technical enough to really make me stop to think through what was happening. The story was slow at times, but I never lost interest in it. Truthfully, I'm not sure what else to say without giving away important details. Definitely avoid spoilers for this one because the experience of everything unraveling bit by bit was what made this reading experience so unique. If you enjoy tense sci fi and dystopia where you have no idea what is going on for most of the book, this one will definitely be for you.

Proctor is our titular Ferryman, ushering the retiring citizens of Prospera through their next phases. There's a lot of world building as Cronin introduces the reader to Prospera, it's revealed slowly as we meet the supporting cast of characters, including rebel/underground types from the less desirable side of Prospera called The Annex.

Things take a turn when Proctor is assigned to retire his own father.

Things take another turn, a ginormous crazy turn about two-thirds of the way into the book. Think about Westworld and Inception having a baby...without saying anything further, it blew me away.

I'm not usually a sci-fi reader, but Cronin's reputation (I was a fan of The Passage trilogy) convinced me to try this one and I'm glad I did. My thanks to NetGalley and Ballantine Books for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Proctor Bennett is a ferryman on the somewhat utopian island of Prospera; his job is to guide people through retirement when their digital monitor says it's time. But when his own number starts to dip, he knows he's not ready. Worse yet, he's started to have some strange dreams, though dreaming shouldn't be possible. Then he's tasked with retiring his own father, who says some cryptic things on the way to and at the ferry. Meanwhile, some of the less privileged citizens of Prospera begin to express their dislike for their forced place in society. When all of this comes to a head, the island will never be the same.

I quite enjoyed this book overall. I'll admit it developed slowly, but there was enough intrigue to keep me curious and coming back to it often. I had my theories, but since I tended to switch from one theory to another, I can't really claim to have been completely correct in my guesses by the end. The conclusion was tied up pretty well, with a full explanation given, but at times along the way, I found myself seriously lost. The overall feel and style of the book reminded me a lot of Fahrenheit 451. Proctor was mostly a sympathetic hero, but I don't think there was a whole lot of substance to him through most of the book. 

The book starts out in present tense, then switches between present and past throughout the book. I never did figure out if there was a pattern to that, so I really don't understand the decision to write it that way. And by the end, though I said it was tied up pretty well, there were a few things, somewhat large but not glaring, that were left unexplained. I wasn't left with the feeling other books of the type, where the reader isn't meant to even understand what is going on with the world until part way through the book, have left me with, the feeling that I can't wait to read it again knowing the truth, to see how things fit together. Maybe that means my guesses were actually close enough that I didn't feel completely thrown when the truth was revealed. However, that doesn't mean I didn't enjoy the ride. If you enjoy cryptic sci-fi stories of vaguely dystopian futures with something of a twist, you'll probably like this book.

As changes in our environment continue to threaten life on this planet, scientists and billionaires explore and debate humanity’s options for survival. In The Ferryman, author Justin Cronin introduces readers to a society that’s been able to evade catastrophe and one survivor who begins to doubt their methods.

Full review published on NightsAndWeekends.com and aired on Shelf Discovery

DNF at 85%. I really enjoyed The Passage and was looking forward to The Ferryman but this one didn’t work for me. I found myself drifting off as I read and ultimately lost interest. Thank you to the publisher, Netgalley and Libro.fm for the advance reading and listening copies.

2.5 stars. The first half of the Ferryman is your fairly standard dystopian story plot: We zoom in on a society that is seemingly idyllic but made so because of certain rigid rules, practices, and governance that have "always been this way." Our main character, Proctor Bennett, experiences something that causes him to question why things are the way that they are, a journey that slowly unravels everything he thought was true and his well put together life. The hook in this story, i.e., the thing that makes this society different from other societies, is that there's no birth and death: when a person's monitor that tracks their overall health, happiness, mental

After this first half, Cronin subverts this typical plot and goes off in a direction that is fairly unexpected. I can't say more for fear of spoilers, but trust me when I say that you will not see where the story was going until it gets there! That being said, the execution was a bit messy. It felt like Cronin was kind of throwing everything at the wall, from narrative tools to social justice topics, to see what stuck. There was so much going on and it felt like the book couldn't decide what it wanted to be – and that's not a good thing in general, especially not for a book that's over 500 pages long!

And this might be just me, but one of my biggest pet peeves in books is extended dream sequences and it felt like fully 20% of the middle of the book is one big confusing dream sequence.

Overall, this felt like a somewhat average sci-fi (dystopian/utopian speculative fiction) novel to me, and even a twist that I didn't see coming couldn't save the messy plot or make it live up to the hype that the blurbs and early reviews have created. Thank you to the publisher for the ARC via Netgalley.

I don't even know where to begin with how this book made me feel. To quote the Oscar winning film, it is everything everywhere all at once! It is dystopian, science fiction, fantasy. It is love and anger, joy and sorrow, fear and hope. It is the rippling waves of a mother's grief. It made me say WTF is going on more times than I can count. i am still not sure what was real or not but it is a fantastic read and one that makes you think. There were times I was reading a rather slow moving part and then WHAM! it was not what you thought it was.

I am ever so grateful to Justin Cronin for his imagination and his beautiful gift of words.

I am also grateful to Netgalley and Random House Ballantine Books for this copy for my unbiased review.

Thanks to NetGalley for the free eARC - I ended up toggling back and forth between this and my physical library copy, which mostly lived at home as it was quite large and a pain to haul around.

I was excited for this as soon as I knew it existed. I absolutely adored the Passage trilogy, and the idea of a standalone Cronin book was super appealing (imagine not having to wait years to see how it all plays out!). This one is interesting - I was miffed when I picked up my library copy and there wasn’t a genre sticker on it (in the adult section, we just have a generic “sci-fi/fantasy” sticker that covers so many bases it’s ridiculous!). But it’s weirdly genre-defying. It’s dystopian, and sci-fi, and fantasy, and I guess a little bit of a space odyssey?

The story takes place in Prospera, a fairly generic-seeming archipelago where people live in tropical comfort. All citizens are fitted with some sort of health monitor, and when it dips below a certain point, they’re “retired” and essentially reborn to start over. It’s unclear if they’re reborn as literally the same person as before, or if they start a brand new life as someone totally different. But anyway, retirees are sent to an island called the Nursery, where through ~science~ they are somehow reborn and then reiterated into Prospera. The thing is, there aren’t any children - iterants are brought back to the island as teenagers. There’s also no real notion of family in the traditional sense - people enter into marriage contracts that they have the option to renew or just cancel. They can apply to adopt a ward…or not. It’s a little reminiscent of the Lauren Oliver trilogy - Delirium? Where people have been “cured” of the disease of love. Oh, and there’s also an Annex island where the people who *serve* the Prosperans live. And they live essentially “normal” human lives - real families, marriages, children, life and death, etc. They’re not slaves, exactly, but they’re definitely not living in the same level of comfort as the Prosperans, and yes, they are starting to get bitter about it! It’s clear that Prospera is sort of a police state - there are security guards and drones and all kinds of ostensible safety measures to keep people from getting beyond something called “The Veil,” which is ostensibly there to protect Prospera from the outside world. What’s wrong with the outside world, you ask? Hard to say. It’s all super vague, but there’s definitely something bad out there, and isn’t Prospera a better, safer place to live?

Anyway, our protagonist is a ferryman named Proctor Bennett. His job is to take retirees to the ferry which will then transport them to the nursery. He enjoys his job, even though it’s emotionally draining, but in one day he’s both assigned a trainee he has no memory of requesting or signing off on, and he’s called to collect his own father. The two have had a strained relationship ever since Proctor’s mother committed suicide (this is what actually opens the novel - she sails away in a dingy and cuts the tracker out of her arm and then jumps over the side. It’s unclear what her endgame is at the time, just that she’s had enough of Prospera). And Malcom’s retirement goes predictably pear-shaped. As people’s monitors drop, they start to exhibit symptoms that look a lot like Alzheimer’s or dementia - muttering, confusion, seeing things that aren’t there, false memories, etc. Malcolm keeps insisting to Proctor that “the stars are wrong” and “our world is not our world,” but it’s his last word that really sticks – Oranios. Proctor has no idea what it means, but the people monitoring the docks are certainly keen to make sure no one hears about it. Proctor is swiftly fired and then sent into retirement (I am VASTLY oversimplifying here). Along the way, he meets up with some members of the resistance, who have a plan to fight back against the Prosperans and…I guess see what else is out there beyond the Veil?

Ultimately, there's a pretty great twist, that turns ALL of this on its head. I do wish it had come a little earlier in the game (what's above makes up a solid 3/4 of the book). Once we get to the twist, it's hard to put the book down, but it does take a while to get there, and as I said, what comes before is a fairly boilerplate dystopia.

Wow, where do I even start?! This was my first experience with Justin Cronin and I loved the writing style, it felt very dreamlike. I did not know what the heck was going on several times in the story, but it all came together. I know some other reviewers have said the twist wasn't surprising at all, so maybe if you read a lot of sci-fi this may not be as enjoyable for you. But, sci-fi isn't my usual genre and I had no idea what was coming at any point in the story. So I highly recommend, especially for readers like me who enjoy sci-fi and dystopian novels but maybe don't read them as often as other genres.

Thank you Random House - Ballantine and NetGalley for the ARC of The Ferryman!

***Best Sci-Fi book of 2023

On my short list of "Didn't want it to end and could not put down!"

I had not read anything by Justin Cronin before, but now I will be getting his other books. I was completely drawn in by the characters, plot, and action of this novel. It has everything you'd want in a book whether or not it was sci-fi... there was drama, philosophy, and a compelling plot!

Proctor Bennett is living a wonderful life - happily married to his wife, Elise, in a land where he enjoys his job, there is no major sickness, and you live way past 100.... so why does he keep feeling like something isn't right, and why does he think he's remembering things that aren't there, and what do they mean?

I don't want to give any spoilers because the premise is really good. I read a ton of books and this one I really loved.
I received this ARC as a reviewer for NetGalley. #sponsored

This book is set on a utopian island, Prospera, that is really under very iron-fisted control. The inhabitants of this utopia live very long lives and then are “recycled” on a nursery island and return to Prospera as 16 year olds with no memories of their past lives. The residents of Prospera are served by support staff that live on a third island known as the Annex. Proctor Bennett is a ferryman who assists citizens as they shift to the nursery. On the day he is forced to move his own father to the nursery an incident causes a shift in Proctor’s life, and the residents of the Annex are growing restless.

I thought the concept of Prospera was interesting, although it certainly wasn’t my idea of a utopia. (I really wouldn’t create a utopian society that needed fashion designers.) However, there was a big twist coming. It took too long for the twist to happen, and I felt that the book was about 150 pages too long. The twist is reminiscent of a bunch of other sci fi stories and I would have preferred it if the story of Prospera had gone in a different direction. The last chapter of the book and the epilogue were too saccharine to have been included in any book.

I received a free copy of this book from the publisher.

I had high hopes for this book after being very impressed by Cronin’s previous book, The Passage, but I was disappointed. It started out strong and held my interest until about 60% in, but it was downhill from there. By 75%, I was forcing myself to continue, and by 80%, there was some salty language as I pushed myself to finish.
I am an avid fan of speculative fiction and science fiction, and was fully immersed in this world for the first half of the book, and was eager to learn the true nature of this mysterious reality, but I didn’t find the explanations in the last half convincing.
Four stars for the first half and two stars for the second half = three stars.

#bookreview

A big thank you to Ballantine Books and @netgalley for the #gifted ARC #TheFerryman !!

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

📖 The Ferryman by Justin Cronin

A group of survivors reside on an hidden island utopia where the truth isn’t what it seems.

What to expect:

🛸 Sci-Fi
🔎 Mystery
🔪 Thriller
🧩 Puzzle

Quick thoughts:

✨ Steady pace.
✨ Eerie vibes.
✨ A little confusing at times.
✨ Big twist at the end.

Overall thoughts:

A man named Proctor slowly becomes unsettled with his life on an utopian island. He starts questioning things and raising some alarms within his society. Meanwhile, there’s also a class structure at play teetering on the edge of revolution. When Proctor and this seemingly underground movement collide they trigger cascading events that culminate in a big twist.

I liked the writing style. It felt very well crafted and warm. The pace was on the slower side but steady. Things unfolded gradually throughout the story. It wasn’t completely absorbing but I definitely wanted to know what was going on.

There was an eerie vibe the entire time, that something wasn’t quite right with this community. The utopia gradually becomes a dystopia as information slowly bubbles up to the surface. I loved all of the puzzle pieces scattered throughout. It was hard to put together what was happening, it kept slipping through my fingers.

The twist towards the end unfolded a little too slow for my liking. It didn’t pack the punch it could’ve. There’s also a lot of information to digest in the end. It made sense how things wrapped up though. This definitely reminded me of the movie Inception so if you liked that then you’ll probably like this story.

SPOILERS!!!


This book was a bag of mixed feelings. It begins feeling like a version of “Stepford Wives”, but quickly becomes its own story which I liked a lot, until around the 60-70% mark. From there, the story falls into a cross between “Inception”, “The Truman Show,” & “Lost in Space.”
The prologue had a great hook, but once the big secret of the story is revealed, that hook loses its meaning and most importantly, its strength. Not that the explanation didn’t work, but it was that the explanation rendered that beginning unnecessary.
From the end, the one thing that I couldn’t suspend disbelief is Thea’s pregnancy during a 300-years stasis. How??? This was the thing that took me out of the story the most, and the 3rd act had plenty of jarring parts. However since this is sci-fi, guess I have to go with the flow.
All in all, it’s an okay read. It can leave you dissatisfied, but it might be fulfilling to the right reader.

Thank you NetGalley and the publisher for providing this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

When I first read the blurb for this story, I had instant nostalgia for similar stories I enjoyed in the past - Soylent Green, The Island/Parts, Logan's Run.... Loved them all! So, of course, I had to read and review this book!

The basics: People who live on Prospera are born, live their lives, and then they retire. Their lives are ordered and controlled. Nobody ever leaves Prospera. Everyone pursues personal excellence, marries by contract, and follows the rules. Once a monitor in their arms reads a health rating below 10%, the people take a ferry ride to another place called The Nursery. Here, they are re-born, revitalized and start life again fresh. Proctor Bennett is a cog in the wheel of this process. He's a Ferryman, taking people to The Nursery. But things get confusing for him as he watches his own monitor click down and he also is faced with providing the ferry trip for his own father. Soon, he finds himself questioning the process and looking for the truth.

Scary concept!! I think this type of story hits home with me because, although they are obviously fictional, the tales have enough parallels to the truth to be disturbing. While we don't have clocks ticking down to our doom, as we age life does get increasingly difficult. We are all ticking down to retirement, old age, death..... It's all part of life, but terrifying. What will retirement be like once it's our turn? Will there be enough money? Will we be respected for our wisdom, or looked down on as a unproductive waste of resources? How close are we to a day and age where aged adults are seen as only a costly drag on society?

I believe I find these stories compelling because they are just that fine line past truth....just fiction enough to be believable and horrifying. What if we took that last little step across that line? Could a life that was completely controlled ever truly be happy?

Great story! The plot sucked me in right from the start and kept my total attention until the final page. This book is well written, suspenseful and disturbing!! This is the first book I've read by Justin Cronin. I plan to read more!! And, if they made this book into a movie, I would definitely watch it!

** I voluntarily read a review copy of this book from Random House/Ballantine. All opinions expressed are entirely my own**

This book was outside my comfort zone. It’s unlike what I usually read. I found it to be well written, but the story moves slow and didn’t really captivate me.

When I tell you this book shook me... I'm struggling to explain how wonderful The Ferryman is without spoilers. To me, it is start to finish perfection. Slow burn reveal, exceptional world building in the idyllic island nation of Prospera, a cast of characters that you will want to read over and over. The Ferryman deals with overarching and gripping issues like loss, trauma, class divisions, and authoritarianism. The Ferryman, Proctor Bennett, has the most unusual job: he escorts "retirees" to the ferry where they'll be reprogrammed and renewed at the Nursery. But when he's asked to escort his own father on his final journey, and the man leaves Proctor with a cryptic message, everything seems to fall apart. I can't stop thinking about Director Bennett, the support staff, and the mission of Prospera. I have a feeling, I'm going to return to the island again and again.

Sincere thanks to Justin Cronin, Random House, and NetGalley for the opportunity to read and review this gorgeous book, The Ferryman.