I loved this. It was very bleak and sometimes sad, but beautiful too.

The world is ending, deciding to focus on the young and the newest generation. The young are hearing a sound and the sound is calling them to kill the elders and the parents. Charlotte and Seth are academics and journalists and just happen to have a front row seat to the end of the world. Charlotte is young and Seth is middle aged. I loved their relationship.

An eat the rich tale that had me thinking about our current world. People are living longer, acquiring more wealth and not paying it forward. What would happen if nature and old gods decided things needed to change?

Thank you to Flame Tree Press for a copy of The Gaia Chime. Here are my thoughts!

Charlotte and Seth are making a documentary together about an up-and-coming tennis prodigy. They are at one of his final games when suddenly he begins acting strangely, he turns and kills someone in the crowd. Little do Charlotte and Seth realize that they are capturing just one violent instance of several occurring around the world, and it’s only just beginning.

First off, this cover is stunning. Now that that is out of the way onto the book thoughts!

There is so much to unpack in this novel. I feel like it could almost be studied in an English course. I like to call it a speculative sci-fi horror novel. But there are so many over arching themes that tie in perfectly with these genres. Some of these themes are racism, cults, mythology, ageism, capitalism, and financial status, plus so so many more. It was tied together quite beautifully and horrifyingly felt like it could actually happen.

There is a lot of violence in this novel, and it just ramps up but there were quite a few memorable scenes that will stick with me. I enjoyed it, although it may not be for everyone. It made sense with the plot which I think made it easier to take in.

The two main characters show a ton of growth throughout. At first, I found Charlotte a little flat and Seth very frustrating but by the end I feel like they had completely flourished and there were pieces of each of them that I enjoyed and pieces that I didn’t.

Oh, and THAT ENDING!

This one should be on your radar, it just came out last week and you should totes check it out!

Ambitious journalism student Charlotte and jaded professor Seth are working on an extremely low-stakes documentary. They’re covering the rising career of a young tennis star— thanks to funding from the athlete’s tycoon father. But their carefully planned film takes a wild turn when their subject violently kills his parents…and they have it all on tape. As they investigate what made him snap, they’ll soon discover the real mystery goes far deeper.

I thought the premise of this book was so interesting, and the central mystery at its core made it a real page-turner. This definitely isn’t your run-of-the mill thriller!

That said, there was a glaring issue that kept me from being fully immersed in the story: the complete lack of women over the age of 25. This is most evident in a scene set at a party where all the named male guests are middle-aged academics and all of the female guests we meet (including their dates) are women in their early twenties. The weirdly gendered age division isn’t remarked upon, like we’re meant to find this normal. It felt almost uncanny valley, like how do these men not have one female friend their own age?

However, I did find this book to be a fun, fast-paced read, and it was an enjoyable experience overall. This wasn't a favourite for me, but I have no doubt it will be for some readers.

A quiet horror with a slow burn, building up to a violent ending. A well executed climate fiction that clearly explains what could very well happen in the near future if we don’t start listening to Mother Earth’s scream!

I have to admit, that after I was completely hooked at the beginning of the book, I got lost somewhere in the middle and thought I completely misinterpreted what the story was about. Well, I think this was somehow deliberate as we follow the main characters Charlotte and Seth, trying to film a documentary about a rich tennis player. What they get instead is the start of a very weird and unsettling phenomenon, an intergenerational tragedy worthy of a Greek play!

What starts as a series of patricides across the world, it soon becomes a war between the 1% against the rest of the world, to ultimately manifest as the battle between the old and the new, the new generation trying to supplant the old generation in order to save themselves and the planet. A story as old as time itself, with Chronus ingesting his children for fear of being replaced on the throne.

This is what we are seeing every day, problems created by the old generation being thrust upon the new generations, without them having no control or say.
This is so well described in this book, and I especially loved the connection with Gaia and the new generation being able to listen to her call and running to her aid.

Needless to say, change is always traumatic, in this case violent and full of blood. But to be fair, I think I’d be willing to sacrifice the old to save Mother Earth and everything in it!
I’ve been listening to her call all my life, trying to change things, now through my daily job, hoping to save the planet.

Are you ready to listen to Gaia’s chime?

Thanks to the author and Flame Tree Press for a copy and this is my honest opinion.

Safe to say we are all increasingly feeling our world isn’t heading in a good direction. Many different opinions differ on the cure. Waking up to see what nasty thing has happened while asleep is becoming a hazard. So where could we go next? In Johnny Worthen’s ecological horror story The Gaia Chime there is a provocative idea that currently leaves me more unmoved than scared.

Ambitious film maker Charlotte has an idea for making it big. A documentary about an up and coming tennis player Bobby. Helpfully he is from one of the wealthiest families that sponsor her college so finding is made available. She employs Seth her disgraced former film teacher but the film is derailed when at a match Bobby goes and kills his parents in front of the crowds. This set in motion a mystery that links with similar deaths in delete families but bigger dangers await.

So while I appreciate that Worthen is tackling the question of how have we got there I don’t feel any connection to the world he created as one I recognise as based on ours. We see rising ecological dangers, capitalist failures and the tench of money pulling the strings but for me it’s all flat scenery to hold up the idea that sounds plausible until you think about it. I’m not spoiling it but it’s a little shallow and seems to make a pat statement about generational corruption it ignores the systemic issues and that all people need to be accountable for their actions. I’ll leave it at that.

I really found as characters Charlotte and Seth rather flat. They talk in statements rather than as real people and it feels a very didactic style of writing. Seth is the old grizzled jaded man with ideals and lo and behold there later a romantic connection with Charlotte his younger former student and I found no chemistry here. It’s for me not that engaging a story and I didn’t find it particularly scary. Focusing on the elites doesn’t make me care much.

Overall this wasn’t for me and that’s down to the lack of connection I felt which considering the topic feels quite depressing. I can’t recommend this.

Charlotte and Seth are filming Bobby a rising tennis star but at a match Bobby kill his father live on tv. This is a good horror novel with well drawn chracters, excellent plotting that will keep you reading till the early hours (but with the lights on) Jonny Worthen is an author to watch. Thanks to Flame Tree Press and Netgalley for this review ARC.

The Gaia Chime is a horror thriller novel, written by Johnny Worthen, and published by Flame Tree Press. A story that combines highly impactful passages with slower ones that allow the reader to think about the previous moments, in a novel that resonates with current events and issues.

We will be following Charlotte and Seth, who funded by Robert Weller, are creating a tennis documentary about his son, Bobby; however, what they didn't expect is to film how Bobby kills his father in the middle of the match. An assassination that marks the start of a much more sinister movement, which will be depicted by our main characters as they investigate the wave of assassinations and chaos that follows this moment, in a mimic of rebelling against a dying world and the generation gap.

Charlotte and Seth are two exceptionally well-fleshed characters, both different in background, but who act as the flawed spectators in this bloodbath of a book. They are excellent leads to chase while we slowly unveil the reason behind this sudden mystery; a plot that also invites the reader to deeply thought about it.

The novel is greatly paced, alternating more frenetic scenes with introspective ones, balancing and allowing the reader to catch a breath in the meantime. The prose is great, a bit more elaborate than it is normal in the genre, but it fits with the philosophical nature of the plot.

The Gaia Chime is a sharp and smart horror thriller, an ambitious story that plays well with its strengths; if you look for greatly written thrillers that are also thought provoking, Johnny Worten's work should be in your list.

5 Stars!

Reading a book that you just know is going to be good is one thing, but there is something special about when a book sneaks up on you and just blows you away. That is exactly what happened to me when I started The Gaia Chime by Johnny Worthen. I knew nothing about the author, but it is a Flame Tree Press release and the blurb sounded interesting, so I decided to give it a shot and could not be happier about doing so.

The documentary was the last chance for Seth, a film teacher, to make his mark and an opportunity for Charlotte, a student still trying to find her place in the world, to complete her graduate thesis. It was a great assignment, too. They had been commissioned by a wealthy family to film the rise of their son into tennis stardom. It seemed like the perfect opportunity. Then Bobby Weller, the subject of the documentary, jumped into the stands and brutally murdered his parents in front a worldwide audience, leaving Charlotte and Seth shocked and searching for answers. They were not the only ones seeking those answers, though, as the world slowly slid into hell.

There is much more going on than one murder and Seth and Charlotte began to notice a pattern emerging around the world. Much like in ancient mythology when Zeus murdered Cronos to seize power, the youth of today are rising up against their parents to seize their inheritances before the allotted time. Charlotte notices that she can hear a noise when the murders she witnesses occur and begins to suspect that there is something going on with the world. It is as if the world has looked at a society built upon extending life and has decided to return control to the young. It is a new world order, and Charlotte and Seth can hope for nothing more than survival.

I really had no idea what to expect when I started the novel but it did not take long for the story to kick into gear. Worthen grabbed my attention from the outset with Bobby Weller's brutal murder of his parents and then began to build the story at a stower pace but still with enough intrigue to keep me invested in what was happening. Seth and Charlotte keep finding themselves in the middle of everything a little too conveniently, but this is explained away to some extent by the fact that they are really the only ones investigating things on a larger level, at least at first. The first part of the novel progresses upon this storyline as the duo suspect that there is something much greater here than a simple murder. As Seth begins to put the pieces together through research and Charlotte feels some effects at the scene of the crime, the fact that something much greater than some isolated instances of patricide become apparent. Neither of them can guess how big of an issue it would become until they go to Brazil and the whole world goes to hell.

The story takes on a much larger scope once Seth and Charlotte go to Brazil and this caused it to lose some urgency. It was as natural progression for the story to take, but it just not work as well as when the story was more intimate and focused on the main duo. Overall, I would give the story a 4.5 but rounded up to 5 as it really is an exceptional read. Worthen brings an original concept to the novel and executes it deftly. There are some hiccups, such as the simmering sexual/romantic tension between Seth and Charlotte that I could have done without, and there is a little bit of a mixed message in the story that opens it up to varying interpretations. Is the Gaia Chime a call to action that science has led to excess in both materials and raising life expectancy that must be stopped? Or is it simply a means to facilitate the youth taking the power from the elderly? I do not mind ambiguity in message, that is one of the beauties of fiction, but the story seemed slightly conflicted on the purpose of the action at times. Overall, though, The Gaia Chime is probably the best thriller (with some scenes of horror, but this is not a horror novel) that I will read all year and is to be celebrated as such. Just do yourself an favor and pick it up. You will not be disappointed.

I would like to thank Flame Tree Press and NetGalley for this review copy. The Gaia Chime is scheduled to be released on March 11, 2025.

This story hit on a lot of points that can relate to today's current events and issues. It is a story that is full of moments when the reader can reflect on these issues. It isn't necessarily difficult to read, it is just a lot packed into a story.

The flow and tempo of the story is perfect, in my opinion. The transitions from scene to scene is smooth and kept me involved in the story. The character development is also spot-on. Charlotte and Seth are amazing characters that I could relate to. They both have their faults, but they see the good in each other, giving them a a down to earth, human-nature type of vibe.

The Gaia Chime may not be for everyone, but it definitely is for those that like a deep story, engaging dialogue, and an unexpected (possibly disappointing) ending. Be patient with this story, and you will be rewarded with an amazing story of what our future could be. All parts of this story, are possible for our world.

#NetGalley #TheGaiaChime #JohnnyWorthen

Scary and it’s hitting hard at the societies of the modern world. The writing could use a bit of polishing but a nice scary story. Thanks to NetGalley, the author and the publisher for this chance to read this book.

Oh, this was good! Unsettling, disturbing, and scary, but also carrying a very timely message for today. There is an underlying sense of unease and things happening just out of sight that builds and builds - and the culmination is nail-bitingly good.

Cool premise, definitely not for me though. While I am not the target for this story I'm sure that the people that it is targeted at will love it.