Trinity: Sol 3 starts as a somewhat formulaic murder mystery/conspiracy novel with some tinges of science mixed in. While it is marketed as a science novel, I would say it barely meets that definition. And it only barely meets it through a cliche trope that has been done thousands of times before. A good science fiction novel should attempt to do something new, and this one definitely doesn’t. Really it’s only meaningful use of science is a mechanism to add some tension to the plot so they have something to work for.

Since this book is barely a science fiction novel, let's look at it from the perspective of a murder mystery/government conspiracy thriller. It barely functions in this regard either. The characters are flat cliches of the genre. There are several scenes where a mysterious man in a dark coat is watching them from the shadows. This not hyperbole, Wilkinson literally uses this throughout the novel. Also - there are references to events that place the novel taking place in 2025 or within the last few years. The amount of references to smoking in doors and payphones in bars is wild for a book published now. No NSA agent is smoking at their desk regularly. The amount of times characters stumble into a bar to use a pay phone is borderline ridiculous. It almost reaches a humorous level when an error using a fax machine helps the characters solve a mystery. Are the inner workings of the intelligence community stuck in the 1970s?

The novel is also oddly paced. Early in the book there is a jump of around 6 years that is never made obvious to the reader. One minute everyone is working together in the lab, the next minute all records of their work are lost to time.

This book screams of an author who normally doesn’t write genre fiction interloping his way through space using all the outdated tropes at his disposal. Unfortunately this isn’t done in a clever or satirical way, it just comes out bad. And this review only scratches the surface.

Starts off as a standard conspiracy thriller with a sci-fi twist, but the pacing stumbles, and the payoff doesn’t quite land. The mystery takes too long to build, and the ending feels abrupt after all that setup. Decent tension, but not entirely satisfying.

Unfortunately, this was a big miss for me. The dialogue felt strange and forced with turns of phrases that felt completely out of place. The characters were bland and interchangeable and the plot was dry. For a science fiction story, there is so little science! It’s a mystery that takes way too long to develop and then the book abruptly ends with no resolution. All those pages for nothing.

Thank you to Netgalley, The Book Guild, and the author for this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

This book has a similar premise to others in this drama with a little scientific jargon to make it interesting. It is thrill oriented with action sequences throughout that will keep the blood flowing. Not a hard read and it will draw you in. Now, the ending. Oh boy, this ending!