Transference (The Narrator Cycle, #1)
Transference by Ian Patterson
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

After reading this, I'm very much sitting on the fence between admiring this story for all the old SFnal ideas it pulls forward to today's evils and being a tiny bit annoyed with the same.

The core SFnal detail reminds me a lot of old classics, be it Niven's body harvesting ghoulishness or Harrison's Make Room, Make Room (Soylent Green), or even a bit of B5 or Voyager, where illnesses can be transacted. You know, where the rich stay rich and the poor go ploop, only it's sickness transference.

In this respect, I guess I simply don't mind. The ideas are fun -- but they DO feel a bit heavy handed. Those who are wealthy in this world get away with everything. It's literally the call of Eat the Rich -- because they're absolutely doing it to all the rest.

Never mind the final point made in this book. Population pressures, et al., are old hat, even as they're ever more prevalent for us now than they've ever been before.

So, I'll just say that this is fun for what it is. I'd love to see readers appreciating these old ideas with fresh eyes again.

As for the real end of this -- I'm looking forward to seeing just how big this can really get.

Worth the read.

I’m not a huge sci-fi reader but I was keen to try something different after my latest run of books, and I thought the premise of ‘Transference’ by Ian Patterson sounded intriguing. I really liked the notion of the illness transfer black market and the societal implications of same.
The book throws you right into the action with Nicholas, our protagonist, waking up from his latest brush with death – a Stage 4 cancer that he has taken on and miraculously survived. As a result, he’s found himself rather more well off than his neighbours and vows to tear down the illness transfer system by infiltrating the higher echelons of society.
And so, Nicholas becomes Allen and inserts himself into the latter’s life without much challenge. Therein is one of the problems with the book – with the exception of later chase and combat scenes, ‘Allen’ has no real conflicts: his family accepts him back without any scrutiny; his girlfriend seems to have no reaction to his overnight change of politics (although this is explained later); his talking pet panther and his naysaying friend Darius are dealt with far too easily to ratchet up any kind of tension.
It's all a little too easy for Allen and I don’t know that we get an awful lot of development of any of our characters, other than both of our leads questioning the idea of how far they will go to make their difference.
Another issue, that others have mentioned, is the clunkiness of some of the language, particularly the dialogue. I’m not sure what the writer was going for with the stilted style of speech as it doesn’t seem to be something that changes from the lower neighbourhoods to the upper ones. It didn’t quite turn me off but I found myself reading some sentences multiple times to figure out what exactly the author was trying to say.
There are echoes of everything here from things like The Hunger Games to The Matrix with some Greek mythology thrown in for good measure. I’ll be intrigued to see where it goes, there are enough loose ends to keep the reader engaged and Patterson has created an interesting world in which to let his characters play.

My thanks to the author, via NetGalley, for the eARC of this novel in exchange for an honest review.

The story takes place in an isolated city divided into social classes. The elite literally live above the less fortunate, and they use these poorer citizens to take their illnesses by the use of a box that transfers maladies like cancer. One “sicko” as they’re called, decides to use the money he made surviving a cancer transfer to bring down the unjust system. To do this, he needs a new body.

And this is where I started having trouble suspending my disbelief. There were several inconsistencies in the world-building that nagged me throughout—like the idea that a world with body swaps and advanced genetic sciences had no cure for disease. The other major issue I had was with the dialogue, and unfortunately this reduced my connection to the characters. It left them decidedly one-dimensional and strange.

I felt the story engaged me the most when it involved the factional politics and dramatic action scenes. My favorite part was an unexpected cruelty of the elite after a traumatic moment. The end goes unexpected places. I think this might be a fun read for fans of early Stephen King or similar unusual plot-driven narratives.

Thank you to the author and NetGalley for a copy of this novel in exchange for an honest review.

I typically don't read sci-fi, but I took a chance on this book that was offered to me through NetGalley. I was not disappointed!! When you think about a book and its ending after finishing it, the author did his/her job.

Enjoyed this one mostly. Could have done without the mashup of old fashioned ways of speaking, it felt out of place here and made the dialogue feel strained. The story moved at a good pace and kept me interested. Some more back story on Nick would have been welcome. The ending didn’t feel forced or staged and it worked out well. Will read the next in this series.

I loved the idea of a superpower taking away others illnesses, it uses that really well and was engaged with what was going on in this world. It was a strong start to the Narrator Cycle series and left me wanting to read more in this series and from Ian Patterson.

I don’t really know how to rate this because it was so uneven. Great concepts with mediocre execution. The dialogue is truly painful, characters are paper thin, but the ending intrigued me and I guess I’ll be back for more with the sequels. Thanks to the publishers and NetGalley for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

I love this book. I love the concept of this futuristic society where sickness is some thing that can be taken from one person and give them to another. It is a little bit sick and twisted the way that their society views people based on the sickness level similarly to the way we currently have a hierarchy based on wealth. It was a very interesting read and I enjoyed it.

Thank you to NetGalley, the author, and the publisher for this complimentary ARC in exchange for an honest review!!