Wow! This book was a wild ride. Every time I thought I had the story figured out, it took a turn. Particularly the last third of the book. What was dream and what was reality? Quite a fun piece of science fiction. Thoroughly enjoyable and I couldn’t put it down. Thank you NetGalley for allowing me to read and review an advance copy of this book.

The Ferryman
by Justin Cronin
Science Fiction Dystopia
NetGalley ARC

Proctor Bennett is a Ferryman, and with that job, he brings the people to the ferry so they can 'retire' when the monitor on their forearms falls under ten percent. The ferry ride takes them to the Nursery, where they are reborn, their bodies brand new, their memories of their past life gone, though sometimes deja vu happens, and unknowingly they find themselves attracted to the same people from their past lives.

But Proctor is dreaming and has for all of this life, something that is not supposed to be possible, and after he takes the man who was his father to the ferry, Proctor's monitor starts to drop and the people around him begin to act suspiciously. But it is them or him?


I can't go too deep into this story or I'll spoil it, but I can say I did not like it. It was too slow. It rambled on as it slowly built up to the 'point of the story', which was one of my guesses I had within the first half of the book.

Maybe if more life was brought into the world and characters, and the 'haves and have nots' weren't so stereotypical, everything wouldn't have felt so flat, but if the flatness was the author's intention, then the book should be a lot shorter. There were too many pages of blah, blah, blah, and I started to skim the book. (Should've DNF it.) Plus the chapters where it wasn't from Proctor's point of view seemed a little pointless.

Some people will love this, but I did not. It was an interesting idea, but for me, it moved too slowly and the characters were too boring.

1 Star

The Ferryman by Justin Cronin was received directly from the publisher and I chose to review it. I have read this author in the past and found while he has a vivid imagination, his books are way to long for my liking. This book was the same. This book is long and takes place over a long period of time (read: decades). The first half is a slow burn that I had to re-reads parts of to keep track of what was going on, as there was so much going on and there was a lot of dialogue with slow action taking place. If you, or someone you buy gifts for is a Cronin fan, or enjoy long intricate stories, give this book a read.

3 Stars.

The Ferryman is a utopian/dystopian novel, not a genre I ordinarily pursue. This copy was gifted to me by the publisher to read and review in advance of its publication. It captured my attention, but it took me two tries to begin to understand what is happening.

The action of the story begins in the nation of Prospera, a three island world, which interacts with no other parts of the world. On Prospera, people arrive looking like 16 year olds but as unformed as babies. Couples have applied to adopt them as their wards. They learn quickly and procede with what might be called a normal life, going to college, pursuing a career, marrying and eventually perhaps adopting a ward of their own. The process is called iteration and the beginning of it is shrouded on an island called simply The Nursery.

Of course, in the spirit of a true dystopian novel, someone begins to wonder what else there might be on the planet, perhaps even what life might be like were it not so perfect. And the central question, or at least one of them, reveals itself to be why has Proctor’s mother seemingly committed suicide by throwing herself into the ocean, rather than presenting herself for reiteration.

The action changes to The Annex, the place where servant types and menial laborers live. There’s something more to life here than meets the eye. But all is not well in the Annex. The people are treated as poorly as those in the slums of our world. And you can sense there is a revolution fomenting. Residents of the Annex do not iterate. They are born and die. They have nothing to lose.

There’s something wrong with Proctor Bennett, the main character, and the novel takes a turn toward the surreal as it explores what might be happening. Bennett has presented his father to take the ferry for reiteration on the Nursery. But at the last minute his father goes crazy and begins to yell nonsense. A guard tackles him and Proctor tackles the guard. Proctor is later accused of muddying the guard though he was perfectly fine when he left the scene. But let me urge you to read it to the end. The journey along the way takes several twists and turns.

This review is long enough that I think I had better leave the rest for you to discover. I thoroughly enjoyed Cronin’s writing and his imagination. I would read another book by him. This one will give you pause to think and much to think about.

Beautiful utopia Prospera, where citizens live long prosperous lives until they decide to “retire” and be born again with new bodies and memories. A ferry ride to Nursery island is the first step of this incarnation and Proctor Bennett is the ferryman who assists Prosperians through the retirement process.

I knew next to nothing about this book and pretty much based my request on the fact that it was written by Justin Cronin. I loved the Passage series and banking on the fact that this would be another wonderfully immersive story.

I found this to be a slow burn. It took me several chapters to get into it, but going in knowing that it’s a long book (close to 600 pages) I knew I had to be patient. It takes until about 50-66% of the book before I could start to surmise what was going on. The story is well written and the characters are interesting. Proctor is a solid character who develops well during the story. He’s a company man initially but slowly starts to see that there are some shady things happening and we follow that journey as the luster of Prospera starts to wear off.

This will definitely be a win for readers who enjoy dystopian fantasy. It definitely gives some Inception, Matrix, Brave New World vibes. Lots of reality stacking. The major twist is jarring and leads you to question everything you just read. However, I was underwhelmed and I just felt like I didn’t care enough. While I can appreciate the writing and story, I just felt very “meh” about it at the end. It was fine, but not worth a re-read or a strong recommendation.

The Ferryman is a long and intricately plotted narrative which unfolds over multiple decades, but after reading and loving Cronin's Passage trilogy, this felt like a half-formed debut with too much going on. (The first half was also a snooze-fest that took me way too long to read.) I thought that I would love anything Cronin wrote going forward, but now I'm wondering if it's not Cronin specifically but those books in particular.

5⭐️

This book was incredible. I definitely feel a bit mentally exhausted from it but it was such an amazing journey. I can't believe it's been so long since the Passage Series and I'm so happy to have another book from Cronin.

This book is impossible to explain without ruining it or giving too much away so I recommend reading the synopsis for details. It's science fiction dystopian. It's very unique but so smart. I can't wait for its release and see what others say/theorize. It has many many layers and is broken up into unique parts. There are multiple points of view but follows the most part of one person,

It's beautifully written and it will quickly suck you in. There's so many emotions that this book deals with including grief. One con of this book was thr middle was a bit confusing for me and I had to follow closely at the end to figure out what we were experiencing prior. But I never would have guessed the ending of this book and my jaw was on the floor,

I'd highly recommend this to fans of Blake Crouch or other sci fi dystopian. If you also loved The Passage don't let this one pass you by.

Thank you to NetGalley and Randoms house publishing for this advanced reader copy. My review is voluntarily my own.

I will be posting my review to my Instagram page the.floofs.booknook and retail sites close or on publication.

This was a weird book, but I liked it. Proctor’s job is to ferry people to an island paradise of retirement. But all is not well, and then this sci fi fantasy just goes weird, crazy, but in a good way. In the end I’m not really sure what I read, but I think I liked it.

#netgalley
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The Ferryman wasn’t an easy read but it was a satisfying one. By the time, I finished, I was still confused on some things but really enjoyed the parts that came together for me. This sci-di dystopian book is all encompassing and so atmospheric.

If I knew what I just read, I might have loved it. The first quarter was confusing trying to place the environment they lived in and to reread some sections which now make sense. The middle part got pretty exciting, albeit confusing in a SciFi way. Once I got to the point of understanding everything, the last few chapters confounded me.

Use your imagination while you read. For SciFi lovers, definitely go for it. For those who love historical fiction, maybe not.

This review will be posting on the Fanbase Press website closer to the release date.

Prospera seems like a perfect world with its comfortable lifestyles, white collar jobs, and lack of death, at least in the most common sense. Once the monitor implanted in each citizens’s arm fall to a certain level they are gently shepherded to the Nursery by a ferryman to be reset into a childlike state and eventually returned to Prospera as a ward of adult members of the community. However, the Support Staff that take care of the menial jobs on Prospera live ordinary human lives with aging, illness, and suffering, and resentment towards the idyllic Prosperans community is growing rapidly. Whispers of a rebel group known as the Arrivalists spread, and an unsuspecting ferryman called Proctor Bennett will be sucked into the heart of the conspiracy when his father’s retirement doesn’t go as planned.
Justin Cronin has written numerous speculative fiction novels (translated into numerous languages including Spanish, Portuguese, French, and German), but somehow I had never heard of his writing until Ballantine’s PR team reached out via Netgalley since my other reviews on the site indicated I might be the target audience for The Ferryman. The subtle mystery of Prospera sucked me in from the first chapter, and as I teased out the facts, I realized the core of Cronin’s story was an exploration of grief rather than a tale of proletariat versus plebians. Simultaneously The Ferryman leaves the reader with a sense of hope for the future even while the novel’s final pages present a bittersweet fantasy for some of the main characters.
I have a knack for reading books that will be ruined if I reveal too much about the plot, and The Ferryman definitely fits that mold. The magic of learning the truth of Prospera, Proctor Bennett, and the world as you read cannot be understated. Clues to the relationship between Prospera and the Support Staff’s world lightly pepper the plot, and when there are big reveals it’s easy to look back and see the subtle foreshadowing. However, knowing how all the pieces fit together before you start removes some of the joy of this book’s journey. I can only encourage intrigued readers to take the plunge.
At times I found The Ferryman a little dense and deliberately paced, but when I reached the end, I understood. Cronin set the readers up as Prosperans who only know what they’ve been told by the leadership. To discover the truth, we must follow in Proctor’s footsteps and slowly decode the dystopian world we’ve entered, and ultimately I felt it was worth the journey.

4.5 Paintings of Faces in the Waves out of 5

Weird but engaging. I never read The Passage series, so I didn’t really know what to expect from the author, but I was pleased with the quality of the writing. I had actually mostly guessed the twist/explanation for what was going on, but I liked that there were more consequences after the reveal. Satisfying ending. A good read!

I absolutely loved the last chunk of the book. It was riveting and heart-rending and fast paced. The beginning was where it falters because it took SO VERY LONG to get through that I literally forgot entirely about that plot summary I read before starting the book. But that last 60% man, what a ride.

Loved it. Thoroughly enjoyable read.

The Ferryman is what I call a thinking person's book. Once you reach the "twist" you begin to see the connections and understand the nature of relationships of the books characters. I recommend you not peek ahead or read spoiler reviews because so much of the joy of reading this book is the slow build-up to the A-HA moment.

In the story, "the beautiful people" live on the island of Prospera. Prospera is an island dream vacation lived daily; no crime, poverty, homelessness in this land of plenty. And Prosperan's needs are met by the "unwashed masses"- the struggling folks who live in the Annex. They cook, they clean and take out the trash, and keep the sewer system functioning. However, not everything is as straightforward as it seems. I can't say much more without giving up plot.

Why didn't I give The Ferryman 5 stars after such a glowing review? I blame Cronin for having set such high expectations with his past books. Maybe that's unfair and as a stand-alone it merits 5 stars. Still, it is difficult not to compare this new work to The Passage especially and the trilogy overall. For me, a rare and perfect story indeed.

I’m not a fan of science fiction and didn’t realize that this was the premise of this book however, I liked it but didn't love it. The world that these characters are in is something that is believable enough to become the future. This is a long book that I admit I lost interest in from time to time. If an alternate universe is of interest to you then you’ll find this book intriguing.

This review is going to be short and sweet as you really should go in unspoiled. I really REALLY enjoyed this dystopian romp, I absolutely tore through the pages and couldn't wait to see what was going to happen next.

5/5

Amazing! I was totally fascinated and engrossed in this book. The writing swept me far and away in its atmospheric prose. I had read Cronin's [book:The Passage|6690798] previously and it blew me away as well.

Here's the description provided:
<i>Founded by the mysterious genius known as the Designer, the archipelago of Prospera lies hidden from the horrors of a deteriorating outside world. In this island paradise, Prospera's lucky citizens enjoy long, fulfilling lives until the monitors embedded in their forearms, meant to measure their physical health and psychological well-being, fall below 10 percent. Then they retire themselves, embarking on a ferry ride to the island known as the Nursery, where their failing bodies are renewed, their memories are wiped clean, and they are readied to restart life afresh.

Proctor Bennett, of the Department of Social Contracts, has a satisfying career as a ferryman, gently shepherding people through the retirement process--and, when necessary, enforcing it. But all is not well with Proctor. For one thing, he's been dreaming--which is supposed to be impossible in Prospera. For another, his monitor percentage has begun to drop alarmingly fast. And then comes the day he is summoned to retire his own father, who gives him a disturbing and cryptic message before being wrestled onto the ferry.

Meanwhile, something is stirring. The Support Staff, ordinary men and women who provide the labor to keep Prospera running, have begun to question their place in the social order. Unrest is building, and there are rumors spreading of a resistance group--known as "Arrivalists"--who may be fomenting revolution.

Soon Proctor finds himself questioning everything he once believed, entangled with a much bigger cause than he realized--and on a desperate mission to uncover the truth. </i>

The novel is stunning in its intensity and, I have to say, there were some things I didn't understand. Regardless, I was still mesmerized. The twists and turns are unexpected and keep you wondering throughout.

Thanks to Random House Publishing Group - Ballantine through Netgalley for an advance copy. This book will be published on May 2, 2023.

This novel is set some time in the future on an island called Prospera, where people can love a pretty long time, and when they either have had enough or start deteriorate according to a meter on their arm, they “retire” and basically are born again in a new body without any of their memories. Much of the book unfolds from the perspective of a character named Proctor who is a “ferryman” like in the title because it’s his job to escort the retirees to the ferry they take to where they are reborn. I don’t want to say too much about the plot because it’s best uncovered yourself, but let’s just say it quickly becomes clear that perhaps this utopia might actually be a dystopia.

This book doesn’t come out until May, but I just couldn’t wait any longer to read it. I’m going to go out on a limb and declare myself Justin Cronin’s biggest fan - he write my favorite series of all time, The Passage trilogy, and all together he’s written 5 books and all 5 have made my top ten lists over the years, the only author to ever achieve this feat. And based on this book, he’s likely to go 6 for 6! Whether he’s writing about characters in ordinary situations in our world (like in his first two books), or about characters in crazy dystopian societies (like in The Passage trilogy or this book), he’s just so amazing at creating characters you care about and really illuminating what it means to be human.

I really couldn’t put this book down, with its great characters, eerie atmosphere, and some jaw dropping surprises along the way. Even though it’s 500+ pages I raced through it. And yes, I cried. And I can’t wait til anyone else I know reads it so I can discuss with them!

4.5 stars

Thanks to Netgalley and Ballantine Books for the eARC!

I adored this book and I am so pleased to have been offered a chance to read it. I really enjoyed "The Passage" so huge fan!

"The Ferryman" is the story of a man who takes people to their final destination at the end of their lives...sort of...

See these people are plopped into a newer younger body and have their memories erased. Which makes no sense, right? If they have no memory how are they the same person? Our memories are what make us!

And that's the brilliance of this book. This perfect life Proctor leads is inherently wrong and exploring that wrongness is a fascinating journey.

I’m a HUGE Justin Cronin fan. I love everything he writes. His mind and imagination are amazing. This story was no different. The stories within stories, the twists and turns… it just keeps going and keeps you guessing until the very end. To try to sum it all up into a short review would not give proper credit to this book. Read it. You won’t figure it out, I promise. Such a fun ride through this story. I can’t wait to read another from this masterful storyteller.