“The Ferryman,” by Justin Cronin, has a lot going on in it. I’m not the best person to read science fiction as it’s something I want to like, but don’t always (I keep giving it the old college try, though!). For the most part, Mr. Cronin’s science bits held my attention - so that’s a positive! I couldn’t help making comparisons, at the beginning, between this book and a combo of “Logan’s Run” and “Stranger in a Strange Land.” This book has the background of a dystopian world, but the main character lives (and works) in the utopian part of the world - think Lego(R) Movie’s “Everything is Awesome” plus early 1984). But over time, the main character (and reader) are slowly made aware that, well, not everything is awesome for everybody. I thought Mr. Cronin did a great job introducing these parts, even early on in the book, so that the reader sees the main character start questioning things, trying to both grok and figure out what is going on. I did like the world building. This is a long book and it took me a while to finish. Overall, this was an enjoyable read.

I’m not usually a fan of dystopian or sci-fi novels but this story intrigued me. I was sucked in immediately and flew through the first half. However, I found myself getting a bit lost in the second half. I was still interested in the outcome so I completed the book. The message of global warming and the dangers we all face with climate change came through clearly but the author didn’t hit you over the head with it. The story alone conveyed it well. It’s thought provoking and entertaining. In spite of the length I would recommend it. Thank you to @NetGalley for the ARC.

I don’t really like to review books by comparing them to other books, but since it’s hard to say what I think without spoiling your experience, here goes: The Ferryman starts like Brave New World or 1984, with one of those utopias that we all know by now are really dystopias, and a protagonist who, for no fault of his own, runs afoul of the powers that be. There is also a young girl that reminded me a lot of the fireman’s companion from Fahrenheit 451. But towards the end it felt more like Mulholland Drive or Shutter Island. Which is to say, there are many ways in which things may not be what they seem. The eventual answers are satisfying in a way both plausible and that imparts deeper meaning.

If all these comparisons got you confused or turned off, please don’t be. The Ferryman is it’s own book, and a wonderful one. It has a dreamy feel, a somewhat disturbing, can’t look away quality. The writing is precise but thoughtful. And the characters are quite wonderful, with many layers.

Many thanks to NetGalley for a free early copy.

This is brilliant science fiction!! It is at the top of my books for ... next year.!

It is complex and mind-boggling with necessary information - revealed at perfect increments. It took me awhile to read it and I felt that only enhanced the book as the chapters need to be absorbed. Perfect for my patrons that love a bit of mystery with their science fiction.

Disclaimer: Received this as an advance reader copy via Netgalley and Ballantine Books (Thank you!!!)

It took me a bit to get into this book, I'd pick it up and read some, then put it down to read some other books. It wasn't until I was about a third of the way into the story that I stopped picking up other books and focused solely on this one.

In this story Proctor Bennet is a Ferryman and life is good, until it isn't. When things start heading south is when the book gets interesting. The book itself is a dystopian sci-fi action mishmash that keeps you guessing about what is going on. I think my difficulty getting into the story was due to the slow pace at which information was revealed and the point at which the book hooked me took longer because it was difficult to make sense of the world being presented.

It's hard to provide more detail without spoiling the story's twists and turns, and it wasn't until I was three quarters of the way done that I was able to connect the dots and anticipate where things were headed. The author does a good job of stringing the reader along without giving anything away.

If you are a fan of The Strain trilogy or Blake Crouch you'll likely enjoy this book.

I Couldn’t Stop Reading This Book

Proctor is a Ferryman, a head Ferryman. The position requires a special type of person, one who can be warm and kind but at the same time firm and regimented. He helps people leave this life to be reborn into someone new. To leave everything and everyone they know and start all over as someone else. When we meet Proctor he is being summoned to pick up someone special and escort him to the ferry for the last voyage in this life. That person is his father.

There are another group of people in this story, people who are not Aristocracy, the people who are transported to the island each day to serve the chosen. They are mostly good people living mostly good lives, but there are some who are getting ready to rebel.

It was a long, slow read for me but I never thought of quitting. The characters had such depth and their stories were so well crafted that I looked forward to the next sequence of events even though I didn’t thoroughly understand a few of the changes at first. The author created a whole new world and made it so real I could picture the people and surroundings in my mind as I read. This is an unforgettable book, not a quick story to read in one sitting but a book to get lost in when the opportunity presents itself.

Thank you Net Galley, Justin Cronin, and Random House for the opportunity to read an advance copy of The Ferryman. This is my honest review.

OVERALL:
If Blake Crouch and Christopher Nolan wrote a book together. Which is just saying that Justin Cronin is that amazing. This book blends speculative fiction with utopia and sci-fi, and then to top it off, throws in relationships in the form of partners, children, and friends. It’s well layered, and seriously kept me wondering almost through the end.

20 SECOND “WHAT’S THIS ABOUT”:
Director Proctor Bennett ferries people at the end of their life, or when they are running less than 10%, per their monitor, to The Nursery. When he gets the notification that his father has requested to retire, this sets off a complex journey that includes his own rapidly decreasing percentage, revolts from the laborers, and the constant question of what is real.

My favorite part:
Unfortunately, I cannot talk about my favorite part without spoiling, but

ARC provided by Netgalley. Definitely grab this as soon as it comes out on May 2nd!

This was a thick, dense book that was a great world building novel.
I loved the story, but got lost in the details.
I felt that the author tried to put too much into the book and then some parts were left lagging.
The author makes it so you are just as confused as the main character and as he starts putting the pieces together, so do you.

Like other Justin Cronin books, I think of this as dystopian fiction. I have been IMPATIENTLY waiting for another book from him. This one involves an island where people go to retire and basically get new lives. Of course, everything isn't as it seems. Fast paced and I had a hard time putting it down to attend to "real life"! Definitely recommend along with his others books, such as The Passage and the other books in that trilogy!

Wow! Amazing! Although I did figure out one of the main twists early on <spoiler>that the characters were in some sort of simulation</spoiler>, there were so many layers of who did what and who knew what that the end was full of surprises. Very well outlined as I feel the reader was given new information at just the right time. I received an ARC of this work for my honest review.

What a different adventure this was! I have heard about Justin Cronin and The Passage series but have never read it. And, to be honest science fiction is usually not my go to when it comes to genres. But, there was something about the description of this one that grabbed me.

This author has an extremely unique ability to provide you with a wave of emotions for each character he rights. It was like a roller coaster following the characters and Proctor on his journey. And Prospera...not sure how I feel about it. Would I want to live there for an extended lifetime only to have my memories and body rebooted and start over? To be honest, I don't think so. But, it certainly was unique.

Justin Cronin always has great stories full of vivid imagery and vast character interpretations. The Ferryman had so much going on, and it was a bit difficult to read at times because there are so many things happening at the same time.

This book was a slow read because of all of the minute details that Cronin gives throughout the book. I felt like I had to re-read a lot of paragraphs to make sure I was understanding the story correctly. That being said, this is a sci-fi lover's dream. There is so many things to like about this, from the real science to the made up science. It reminded me a lot of the TV show Lost in the fact it is very "meta" and has a lot of back and forth between time (or is it reality?).

Great read, but not for the faint of heart, and definitely not for those who aren't big into sci-fi.

Wow. This novel blew my mind. So much going on here. Lots of set up
But a very satisfying ending. Reminiscent of Blake Crouch and also a bit of a Cloud Atlas vibe here.

This was one of the best books I've read this year. The first few chapters have a shifting POV which I, despite normally disliking, found engaging in the way it was used to tell the story. Cronin sets up his story in a way that reveals parts of the mystery at each step, builds an interesting world, and tells a beautiful story. It's the kind of book that leaves you with a book hangover and leaves you wanting to pick up another book by the same author.

The Ferryman
by Justin Cronin

OMG! I was given an ARC to read from the publisher but I really had no idea what this book was about. I had never read this author's books before. This book blew me away!

Sometimes I need a very light and easy book, nothing to work my brain. I call those 'Bubble Gum' books. But other times I need a book that is rich in plot, in twists, stimulates my mind to the point that when I am done reading, I can't hardly think! This is what this book does!

This takes you to an almost perfect world where Proctor lives. He is a Ferryman. He takes people who have their monitor in their arms showing a level of less than 10. He takes them to the Ferry where they cross to the Nursery island. They will be reprocessed somehow and integrated into children to be adopted. Their memories wiped clean.

One day he has to take his father and it doesn't go as planned. His father mumbles something. Something that the government doesn't want Proctor to know. That's when life gets very strange for Proctor!

I was constantly guessing and glued to my tablet! What was the meaning of all of the clues?There's so many twist! The story keeps evolving and changing! I just held on and went for the wild ride!

This is a fascinating, riveting, intriguing story with just a handful of characters that really made the story POP! The ending was very satisfying too! I love a good ending! This is one of the best books I have read this year!

Before seeing this book on NetGalley I'd never heard of it or the author. It sounded like an interesting book that I may like, but I wasn't sure.
I. Am. So. Glad. That I saw this on here and decided to give it a try! It was fantastic! The story is so engaging and so well-written. The mystery kept me guessing right up until each piece was revealed, and I never felt anxious to get to the end or to the resolution; I just enjoyed the ride of the story as it took me along, I was content to be where I was in every part of the plot, because it was all worth reading. Well, maybe not "all", but rather "mostly".

My one criticism would be events at about 70% in; the pacing becomes somewhat erratic here, with some drawn-out episodes that I wasn't sure where they were going and they broke the immersion, and other scenes that were action-packed by contrast with the steady pace of most of the story. Some of those scenes, and one in which a character has angry outbursts over a long-ago betrayal, felt really incongruent with the rest of the book in that these read like typical fictional drama scenes, based on fictional characters' behavior rather than on real-life human behavior. Some parts, too, I felt could have been cut out or trimmed down in order to maintain the book's forward progression and not be quite so long. Maybe I was just being overly critical here, but that section really stood out to me. Oh, wait, another criticism was a point before that when something apparently happened between two characters but while the scene was being played out it wasn't mentioned or even alluded to; it was just talked of later as having happened, which was confusing because I felt like I was there and it didn't happen.

My overall opinion of this book is that it is surprising, engaging, entertaining, and one of the best books I've read this year. It's very solid storytelling, and other authors could basically read this and learn how to do it, because Mr. Cronin nails it.

I loved this book.

Thank you for the EArc NetGalley. Like another reader I DNF’d this book. The prologue was good and I thought I was hooked but as I started reading I realized I was no longer invested and was frequently finding myself distracted. I’m sure people will love it but it was absolutely not something I waned to waste my time on.

I'm not always a science fiction fan, but I was intrigued by this book. The plot is complex but the powerful narrating voice kept me feeling grounded. Fans of Black Crouch would love this novel.

Review of The Ferryman by Justin Cronin
Tentative On-Sale Date: May 2, 2023

My thanks to Ballantine Books for offering me an ARC of this novel.

Some of the words that the editor used to describe this novel when offering it to me were cerebral, inventive, thought-provoking, and powerfully thematic. Having never read any of Cronin’s previous works, I had no idea what to expect. I felt as I started reading that if even two of those descriptors turned out to be true, I was in for a pleasant read. What an understatement those words turned out to be. The Ferryman is an amazing story! Let me add more words to that list: futuristic, apocalyptic, thrilling, wishful, and hopeful.

Cronin’s view of the end of our world is not the epic battle scenarios of things like Mad Max. Oh…there is class struggle with the typical haves and have-nots, but even this negative part of the story comes to a somewhat pleasant and positive resolution. There is some strife and fighting, but these parts of the book are necessary for the story to advance. I do not enjoy (and try to avoid) reading about class-conflict leading to war, but at this point of the story, I trusted the author’s story enough to know that this was going somewhere and to just be patient. I was right, and it was a fair resolution.

I found myself reading slower and slower. Not because the story was becoming uninteresting and not because I wasn’t being drawn back to reading when I should have been doing something else, but because I just did not want this book to end. I was so sad when I finished reading it, but I loved the ending. I have often thought that book-endings must be the most difficult part of the writing process. I don't really know this for a fact, since I have never written a book, but the ending of The Ferryman was exactly like I wanted it to be. Thanks, Mr. Cronin.

It is obvious to me that I need to seek out and find all of Cronin’s previous works. I have great expectations.

My star rating: 5 stars

This is a book that will find its readers with or without my input, so I'm going ahead and DNF-ing at 12%. While I think the premise is intriguing if a bit derivative and actually liked the prologue, neither the authorial voice nor the narrative one are compelling enough to carry me through as my interest dwindles. Cronin is obviously skilled, but maybe just not the author or story for me.

Thanks to Ballantine and NetGalley for the ARC!