Early Riser - Rambling Readers

No cover — Jasper Fforde: Early Riser (2020, Penguin Publishing Group)

416 pages

English language

Published Dec. 31, 2020 by Penguin Publishing Group.

ISBN:: 978-0-14-311127-6

(3 reviews)

Every Winter, the human population hibernates.

During those bitterly cold four months, the nation is a snow-draped landscape of desolate loneliness, and devoid of human activity.

Well, not quite.

Your name is Charlie Worthing and it's your first season with the Winter Consuls, the committed but mildly unhinged group of misfits who are responsible for ensuring the hibernatory safe passage of the sleeping masses.

You are investigating an outbreak of viral dreams which you dismiss as nonsense; nothing more than a quirky artefact borne of the sleeping mind.

When the dreams start to kill people, it's unsettling.

When you get the dreams too, it's weird.

When they start to come true, you begin to doubt your sanity.

But teasing truth from Winter is never easy: You have to avoid the Villains and their penchant for murder, kidnapping and stamp collecting, ensure you aren't eaten by Nightwalkers whose thirst for human …

Every Winter, the human population hibernates.

During those bitterly cold four months, the nation is a snow-draped landscape of desolate loneliness, and devoid of human activity.

Well, not quite.

Your name is Charlie Worthing and it's your first season with the Winter Consuls, the committed but mildly unhinged group of misfits who are responsible for ensuring the hibernatory safe passage of the sleeping masses.

You are investigating an outbreak of viral dreams which you dismiss as nonsense; nothing more than a quirky artefact borne of the sleeping mind.

When the dreams start to kill people, it's unsettling.

When you get the dreams too, it's weird.

When they start to come true, you begin to doubt your sanity.

But teasing truth from Winter is never easy: You have to avoid the Villains and their penchant for murder, kidnapping and stamp collecting, ensure you aren't eaten by Nightwalkers whose thirst for human flesh can only be satisfied by comfort food, and sidestep the increasingly less-than-mythical WinterVolk.

But so long as you remember to wrap up warmly, you'll be fine.

9 editions

Paul Oldham reviewed Early Riser by Jasper Fforde

An interesting idea but poorly executed

1 star

I'm a fan of Fforde's earlier works so I came to this with a great sense of anticipation but I was disappointed.

Let's start with the cover. What may not be obvious from the image on this page is that this hardback book was a big rectangular hole chopped into it through which you can see the first page (the beach scene). This makes the book awkward to hold and read as you can't put your fingers in that area.

Be that as it may I got as far as page 262 of 400 before I finally gave up on it. It's full of Fforde's usual gimmicks, like having a quote from another (fictional) work as the heading for each chapter and the whole plot revolves around another of his alternative worlds, and in particular in this one an alternative Wales, which is subject to what is not really an …

I'm a fan of Fforde's earlier works so I came to this with a great sense of anticipation but I was disappointed.

Let's start with the cover. What may not be obvious from the image on this page is that this hardback book was a big rectangular hole chopped into it through which you can see the first page (the beach scene). This makes the book awkward to hold and read as you can't put your fingers in that area.

Be that as it may I got as far as page 262 of 400 before I finally gave up on it. It's full of Fforde's usual gimmicks, like having a quote from another (fictional) work as the heading for each chapter and the whole plot revolves around another of his alternative worlds, and in particular in this one an alternative Wales, which is subject to what is not really an ice age but rather very extreme winters during which most humans hibernate (summers, although we never get to be in one of those other than in dreams, seem to be normal, so it's not an ice age in the normal sense).

With Ffordes other books the warped reality seems to work but with this one it really doesn't. For example I won't give away the plot twist but the business with Aurora and Toccata just isn't plausible, even in this alternative reality and I got bored with waiting for the plot to be revealed.

Thankfully my best beloved reminded me that I didn't need to finish a book if I wasn't enjoying it. So I didn't.

dht6000

rated it

Feb. 21, 2020

Andrew Lane

rated it

Aug. 11, 2018

Subjects

English literature