Overview:

Atropos was a well written dive into a fascinating world. The story sprawls across a more than 300 year time span and shows the progression of humanity after a world altering event. It blends sci-fi with mystery and creates an engaging narrative despite the extended timeline. This story is heavily premise focused rather than being character or plot focused.

Deep Dive:

My biggest complaint was that the book suffered a little from saggy middle syndrome. A lot gets set up early in the book, and in the middle, there are a few places where the narrative drifts and the story doesn’t weave together well for me. The mystery plot helps pull the story out of this dull drum, but it does slow down for a bit in the middle.

My minor grips are that there is some heavy handed repetition of exposition and that it’s a bit of a sausage fest. There are a few women present, but most are only significant as mothers and significant others. This is only a minor gripe. I tend to read books that are female centered, so I could just be a bit off center in preferring more women in books.

I was impressed by the professional polish on this book. Other than the repetitious exposition, the book was extremely well edited and read smoothly.

The expansive world of this story was incredible. I’ve come across a few premise driven books in the sci-fi genre and they are difficult to pull off. They have a tendency to be interesting at first, but get boring as there’s nothing to pull the reader through the story. This book solves that problem by incorporating a mystery that keeps the reader engaged and interested in what happens next.

The mystery itself was well written. It was planted well throughout the story and the reader had enough information to figure out the mystery on their own, but not enough to make it boring. I was engaged with the mystery until the very last page!