I had really enjoyed Binge’s Ascension and this had a lot to remind me of it with the chapter structures and the mixed media format. With Ascension the horror elements were more out there, Dissolution felt more sinister and I felt more uneasy reading it. With a novel like this, exploring the constraints of the created world properly to make the mystery aspect satisfying was necessary and I thought Binge managed to do just that. I think the slow burn worked well for it. There are sci-fi elements in this one but it’s definitely beginner friendly at that. I also enjoyed the exploration of grief and memory. It also reminded me of The Life Impossible and The Other Side of the Night.

First, can I just say that I loved that the protagonist is an elderly lady? Like how often does that happen? And she is awesome. Loved her desperately. More of that, please and thank you! I also really enjoyed that we got to see the history of how Maggie and Stanley reached this point, and there are a lot of great twists and turns that led us there. I will say, my one minor gripe was that some of the scenes from Stanley's boarding school days got a little long, and maybe a wee bit boring. But! This is not most of the book, just a minor thing.

It takes a lot of turns I didn't expect, and had my jaw on the floor in places. It was also incredibly heartfelt and emotional, which I don't think I expected with all the thrilling sci-fi bits, but tucked into all of it was some really great commentary on life. It made my heart both sad and happy, in the best of ways.

Bottom Line: This was more than just an exciting sci-fi book (though it was that, too!)- it was an earnest look into love and life, too.

Thank you Netgalley for the Advance Copy in exchange for an honest review.

4.5 stars! Yeah this one was good! TLDR; if you like Blake Crouch and sci-fi thrillers, this would be a good one to pick up.

This story follows Maggie Webb, a wise-cracking octogenarian who is just drifting through her twilight years, as her daughter is no longer speaking to her and her husband Stanley is in a care home for Alzheimers and barely even knows who she is most days.

Until one day a strange man walks into her life and tells her some unbelievable things about Stanley's past, and tells her that he may be able to reverse Stanley's memory loss, if she will only help him with some things. Obviousbly this is a little more complicated than he initially lets on, and we are off on your exploration of the depths of Stanley's memories. We get a dual Stanley / Maggie POV that spans across the timeline of their lives together, and it does get pretty complicated at times before ending in a deliciously satisfying ending that ties up all the loose ends.

The story goes places I wouldn't have expected and while it probably could have been edited down slightly to improve the pacing, it is still a compelling and fast paced read. Maggie carries the whole story - she is a truly unique character. (seriously when was the last time you read a book where the main character is 83, especially a sci-fi?)

This really worked for me, and great to find a really satisfying read from an author I'd never heard of via a NetGalley promotion.
I'm always looking for a quick-paced sci-fi thriller that isn't too dumbed down. Dark Matter is probably my favorite example of that, and this comes surprisingly close.

3.5

Technological Thriller - with parts that seemed to drag.

Maggie has been caring for her aging husband who is losing is memory of the many sweet years they have had together. A mysterious stranger comes to her door to tell her someone is removing those memories to find a deeply buried secret. Can she trust this stranger? Can she save her husband? It gets pretty far-fetched and the reader needs to suspend quite a bit of reality. Too much for me.

My thanks to Net Galley and Riverhead Books.

This book was such a page turner, I could barely keep from continuing with the alternating timelines. It tells the story of Maggie Webb, who has been taking care of her husband Stanley for the past decade as he struggles with memory issues. Her daughter is also no longer speaking to her, so she is at her wits end when a stranger proposes that her husband isn't losing his memories, they are being taken from him. This launches us on a whirlwind story that takes us all over the globe and over time, as she struggles to uncover what's really happening to her husband and who she can trust. We also get alternating chapters that detail Stanley's past, which I greatly enjoyed. Binge does a great job of leaving you wanting more at the end of the alternate POVs, which is usually a criticism I have of these types of books, where you are dreading returning to one or more POVs. I really enjoyed this fast paced thriller with a scientific edge.

At its core, Dissolution by Nicholas Binge is a love story about a fiercely determined 83 year-old woman who is trying to recapture the memory and hence the identity of her husband whose selfhood has mostly disappeared. But Dissolution feels nothing like a romance. It is a tense thriller in which the titular phenomenon threatens to destroy all memories and identities if it is not contained. The story begins with a countdown, letting us know that in eleven hours all will be lost unless Maggie, the heart and soul of this narrative, can help a mysterious interrogator named Hassan retrieve the secret of controlling the memory-dissolving force that seems to be lost in her husband Stanley’s past.

The story is built around the premise that “our identities are defined by our experiences, and our experiences are just a collection of our memories“ (Kindle edition, Location 871). They are what make us human. If we lose memory, we stop being ourselves, stop being human. Under Hassan’s guidance, Maggie needs to plunge into Stanley’s memories to find the secret to stop the dissolution. This becomes a form of time travel, and the narrative intertwines with great skill chapters on Stanley’s past and Maggie’s present until they converge in an exciting climax with a love-affirming twist.

So we go back from the present of 2021 to Stanley’s youth in the early 50s at a school where he has no friends and feels he isn’t seen because socially he is nobody. Soon, though, his talent is recognized by a teacher named Waldman who invites him to a special class of a select few brilliant students. That class becomes the scene of Stanley’s intellectual growth and his bonding with a few good friends, especially Jacques and Raph.

Some time after leaving school under tragic circumstances, Raph and Stanley are deep into their scientific work on memory, with disappointing results. Jacques, who has nominally been working with them, reveals his own secret lab. Amidst strange looking experiments involving human organs, he claims that he has found a source of the power to control or destroy memory, but containing it is the problem. He has a quite grisly method of doing so temporarily, and when Raph and Stanley realize what he is doing, there is a terrible rupture between them. Be prepared that these scenes involve a lot of violence and body horror.

Thereafter, the friends go their separate ways. Stanley eventually embarks on a world-wide journey that takes him to the Australian outback and indigenous peoples of different continents as he seeks to find the source of the great power that could help or destroy humanity.
.........
Dissolution is overall a fine combination of sci-fi thriller and keenly observed human relationships. It’s not just about memory as a subject of experimentation but memories of intensely felt lives and a love that persists and deepens over fifty years. As someone who has emerged into old age with such a relationship, I found it especially gratifying to live through Maggie’s struggles to help her man and hold onto her love for him at all costs. How many sci-fi novels are there that feature a character in her 80s who hasn’t gone through some sort of rejuvenation process? But I did have reservations while reading the novel. Some of the sci-fi elements, especially time travel, were waved over, and some obscured by horror scenes. Pulling in aboriginal lore felt unnecessary and a bit appropriative. But, apart from those problems, this is a book I like for its central characters and deeply human and accurately observed relationships as well as its well-paced thriller elements.

This is a hard review to write because I have conflicted opinions about the novel, and it is hard to write a review without spoilers.

This is a very clever, alternative time travel story where it’s memories that determine the “reality” of the timeline we live in. My impression of the novel is it is a thought experiment exploring the different themes on memory, what I will call deep memory (extremely long ago), and the essence of time. What is time really and how does it operate?

I felt the set up of the characters, however, stretched my credibility a bit. Fair, it is a science fiction, time travel novel you say, but for whatever reason I really didn’t buy into the characters, except maybe Stanley and Maggie. Or the plot for that matter.

But it does turn out to be a very clever trajectory and the last third of the book is unputdownable a super clever and the two protagonists (really three) try to outsmart the other with the stakes unimaginable.

Overall, I enjoyed it with some reservations and I think fans of speculative fiction will as well.

THIS. WAS. AMAZING.

Do you like Blake Crouch? Do you like time travel? Do you like mind-bending, utterly enthralling sci-fi?

Then you're 100% in the right place.

I have few words besides those of amazement of this book. The literary prowess Binge flexes is utterly stunning.

"Endings don't announce themselves. They sneak around you; they shuffle their way past unnoticed until, on some cloudy day, you look out on an empty street and realize everything ended some time ago."

I loved all the characters - Stanley, Maggie and even Hassan in some ways. I loved watching everything slowly unfold. The memory spade, time travel implications, and more. Amazing is, quite literally, all i can spout about this novel.

Please, give this a go! It's an amazing read, and one you definitely won't regret!


*I received an ARC from NetGalley in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.*

This may be one of the most well written Sci-Fi stories I've ever consumed. It had me on the edge of my seat the entire time and I couldn't put it down. This is easily my favorite Sci-Fi book of 2025. The dynamic between Maggie and Hassan keeps you on your toes until the very end. I will read more from Nicholas Binge as he has now become an auto-buy for me.

Fabulous!!! I loved just about every minute of this novel. This novel was one that I took my time with. While I wanted to continue reading to know what happened., I wanted to also digest and appreciate the novel itself.

As a quick synopsis, Maggie is tasked with digging deep into her Alzheimer ridden husbands mind in order to find a solution that could possibly save humanity.

While the main concept is geared more towards science fiction, this novel goes way beyond that. As for the science fiction aspect of this, it does not go too deep into the inner workings of it. Which for this reader was perfect. I tend to glaze over when things get super technical. There were a few moments while reading that I went OH! As everything clicked into place. The characters were developed in such a way that you couldn’t help but become engrossed in each of their minds.

I cannot recommend this book enough. It certainly is going to be my one of my favorites this year. I will be checking out more from this author for sure.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher, for my advanced copy in exchange for an honest review.

I can't imagine a scarier scenario than deep diving and getting lost inside your partner's memories of 80 years of life. Dissolution is a love story deeply embedded within a mystery within a speculative fiction/sci fi novel. Maggie's husband Stanley is in assisted living, in the memory care unit. A stranger appears into her life and tells Maggie that Stanley does not have dementia, but his memories are being stolen. She has renewed hope that he can regain his short and long term memory and become "her Stanley" again.

Hassan gives Maggie the chance to go back into Stanley's memories- to places and time they shared together in 50 years of marriage and with their daughter, Leah. The chapters alternate between Stanley's past- back to 1955 before he met Maggie. It becomes clear earlier on in the book that Hassan is not all he seems.

This is a fascinating premise that unfolds over time, layers upon layers are revealed... and I missed some. I did have to keep flipping back to understand where I was in the narrative, and to differentiate the true from the false. Although I liked Maggie and believed her love- and Stanley being a true romantic, the characters themselves fell a little flat for me, protagonist and antagonists being tragically exaggerated. I liked this book a lot, but I am not sure I completely understood it. It was exciting and very dark/gruesome in parts.

Memories as time travel is something intriguing to me, and this was certainly a fresh way of thinking about it.

Thank you to Netgalley and Penguin/ Riverhead books for the ARC. Book to be published March 25, 2025.

A mind-bending mix of neuroscience, time travel, and memory manipulation wrapped in an emotional love story. The mystery unfolds in layers, keeping the tension high while exploring the fragility of reality itself. A gripping, cinematic thriller that sticks the landing.

Dissolution is one of those books that I finished, closed the book, and just stared into space for several minutes. This book was FANTASTIC.

High concept scifi doesn’t always hit right for me. Binge’s previous book, Ascension, was like that. It’s an objectively good book, I can see why people loved it, but I’m just not the right audience. Dissolution though? This was absolutely the book for me.

Our protaganist is Maggie, an elderly woman visited one day by a stranger named Hassan. He tells her that her husband, currently in a care facility, isn’t actually suffering from Alzheimers or dementia. Someone is actually removing his memories, and with Hassan‘s help, she can stop it and bring him back. Maggie can tell that he’s not giving her the full story, but who wouldn’t take the chance to get back the love of their life?

You hop about in time, both in Maggie’s POV and her husband, Stanley, as you begin to gradually uncover the edges of this mystery and what it all means.

I don’t want to spoil anything, so that’s all I’ll say about the plot, but the ending? Holy hell. Chef’s kiss. Perfect. Sticking the landing on a story like this is so hard, and it’s what convinced me this is a 5 star book.

Love it. Seriously thinking about buying the beautiful Broken Binding edition, it’s so pretty and the book is so good.

Thank you to NetGalley for the ebook ARC!

It is rare that I give a 5-star review, but Dissolution is one of them! Spanning more that half-century, this unique take on time-travel delivers, and maybe more importantly it delivers on a level of enduring human relationships and love, and how reality is shaped. It was interesting to read this book at this point in time, having just read Yuval Noah Harari's "Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind" (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25004163-sapiens and immersed in reading James Tynion's "The Department of Truth Series" (https://www.goodreads.com/series/300709-the-department-of-truth) that touch upon similar topics from a non-fiction and fictional points-of-view respectively.

While a couple of things I speculated on turned out as I expected, I did not see the final solution/twist, which is both satisfying and thought-provoking.

Nicholas Binge clearly knows how to craft a good and intriguing starting point for a SFF story, I was hooked on this from the first page. Ultimately however it never quite comes together. The book leans very heavily on visual descriptions, to the point where it feels more like a treatment for a movie than a fully fleshed-out novel. There’s a lot of beautifully written imagery, but not much weight behind it. Instead of feeling immersed in the horror, I felt like I was being told how eerie everything was meant to be. The characters feel thin, the ideas intriguing but underexplored, and the execution ultimately a little unsatisfying. I wouldn’t say I disliked "Dissolution," but I can’t say I loved it either. It left me vaguely disappointed, especially because it starts so promisingly. As this was my first time reading Binge, I don’t know if I’ll be rushing to pick up more of his work.

In 2023 Ascension passed across my desk, I was intrigued by the cover and the description sounded like something I would enjoy. I did not immediately check it out, but it went on my TBR. When I did read it, I discovered that, yes, I enjoyed it, it was Lovecraftian, it elicited a cosmological dread. It took an incredible premise, but it was just slightly flawed in ways that are now lost to my memory. It did however put Nicholas Binge on my radar. Reading Ascension put me in mind of guys like Blake Crouch, someone who has these fantastical, imaginative stories to tell and I decided I would keep my eye out for anything new by Mr. Binge.

Dissolution takes that near miss that was Ascension and crushes it out of the park. This is great storytelling and wonderfully imaginative. A story about Neuroscience run amok, Nicholas tells a story that is on one-hand laden with science and technology, while still maintaining an accessibility that allowed my frail mind to continue to grasp the story and implications, thereof.

The relationship between the elders Stanley and Maggie, is sad and lovely, and as young Stanley's pursuits are uncovered, the reader finds themselves in a great, "Inception-like" mystery. Stanley's memories are being taken and after a near lifetime together, Maggie is the only one able to set those memories right.

I really enjoyed this book and thank you to the publisher and Netgalley for granting me early-access.

I was drawn to this because I enjoyed the author's previous book, Ascension. This one is equally as suspenseful! It kept me up to late many nights. I was intrigued by the story. I love when science fiction pulls in topics like memory, cognition, and relationships. That's when it really soars for me and pulls me in. This definitely pulled me in. I adored the central relationship of Stanley and Maggie. The ending was surprising!! I did not predict that. Loved this!!

After loving Binge's last novel, Ascension, I was excited to pick up Dissolution this weekend. It is a fascinating premise that follows through on character development too. I especially appreciated the main character Maggie's story and perspective. Although I did feel like some aspects of the middle slowed the story down, all in all it was worth it for the payoff at the conclusion. This was an excellent sci fi novel, part thriller, part interpersonal drama, with lots of questions posed throughout that are actually answered by the end!

Thank you to NetGalley and Penguin Group Riverhead for an ARC of Dissolution.

WOW, this book was such a wild, mind-bending ride! Think Inception meets Dark Matter meets Good Will Hunting. This is a must read for Sci-Fi fans and I think it would make an absolutely amazing movie! I'll be turning this story over in my mind for a long time.

4.5 stars!