Another 2016 Tournament of Books entry. This starts with a bang and then fizzles at the end. A wife returns from a trip to find her husband has just died and due to a secret contract with a Cryogenic outfit, his head has been removed! Subsequent chapters alternate between the pov of the re-animated husband centuries into the future and the distraught wife trying to come to terms with the consequences of her husband's decision. Well written but the story itself becomes muddled at the end. 3 stars...

Um, that ending felt abrupt. It was like reading such a promising first draft of a story, so full of almost developed ideas.

I don't know what the hell I just read.I really wanted to love this book, because it seemed different, but i only loved the first half. After that, it seemed the author/s just said, "Oh, haha, never mind." The second half was almost like a different book, and I was irritated and confused.

No.

Artsy, experimental artificeDisappeared up its own oriface By the time we got to the pointy end of the pyramid it was digital drivel. Ohh! How clever! What an interesting way to finish! Hogwash! It was indulgent gimmickry! (And that is the Kindle version without the coloured tabs and forward/backward swipes of the digital version)The novel started out with such promise as futuristic genre writing. Its chapters changed in point of view and place in time. It was an interesting take on cryogenics...

This book made me think "WTF did I just read?" I have some theories for how the book could be taken to have ended, or how I personally would like to be able to interpret it as ending. First I will share my overall review with no spoilers, and then I will list my theories under a SPOILER warning so that anyone who has read the book can let me know if they think any of them are plausible. This is the first Tournament of Books contestant that I've read. It is up against "A Little Life" (which I hav...

The two people who wrote this book obviously didn’t talk to each other. “Here, you write the first half and I’ll write the second half and we’ll just put them together and call it a book, ok?”First half three stars, second half one.

Many other reviewers seemed underwhelmed by The New World, so I was genuinely surprised by how much this short novel moved me, intellectually and emotionally. Jane and Jim are a typical married couple who vow to make their marriage work, knowing that there will be betrayals and sadnesses large and small, but Jane never expects that upon his sudden death Jim's head will be removed to be cryogenically frozen, per his wishes of which she was never aware. The first half of The New World alternates b...

3 1/2 stars. When this book first started it was pretty amazing. The word I kept thinking was "complex". A man dies and has his head frozen cryogenic style and now he has to go through the process of navigating his consciousnesses to another plane of existence, the new world. Meanwhile, his wife had no idea he was gonna do this and chaos ensues for her as she tries to get her husbands head back.It's everything I could have asked for in a premise for a novel. Then about 70% in, it just starts lo

The New World has early slightly goofy but still touching sci-fi promise (what if the cryonics people were right and you could be restored to life in the future? how could you live knowing your prior "life" was lost to you forever?). Sadly, as others have noted, the book loses its way completely about midway through by dropping the sci-fi entirely, and becoming an unsatisfying and awkward love story beset by unrealized characters, improbable plot twists, and shaky chronology.I'm not sure if the

I loved the premise of this book: a man dies and his wife returns from a trip to find (surprise!) that his head has been removed and cryo-preserved. The first half of the book is plot-driven, exploring how this turn of events affects both the wife and husband, and what happens next. Midway, the book shifts gears and becomes philosophical and reflective, expanding on themes introduced during the first half of the book and examining the marriage more in-depth. The first half felt to me like it was...

This is a weird, lovely little book, exactly the kind I was expecting. It's unusual, tonally similar to Michel Faber's The Book of Strange New Things, though totally different in nearly every other way.This was more lovely than I expected, and I'm really glad I dove into this slim little sci-fi love story.

I actually quite enjoyed 94% of this book, and was planning to give it a solid 4 stars. It's a little bit speculative fiction, and the imagined afterlife of a cryogenically frozen head was creative and detailed and entertaining. It's also a story of a marriage, one that's mostly strong and mostly sweet, but has its weak points and sour points that make you appreciate the rest. However, it felt very much like two different books to me: the first half a sort of Galaxy Quest meets Stepford Wives wi...

I think this is the weirdest book I have ever read and I honestly could have rated it anywhere between two stars and four. It's such a novel concept and there was a lot that I liked, but the second half is a mess.

I think this novel was really meant to be a short story, and the writers ran out of steam to finish it up properly. The premise is really interesting.

The New World is a novel about love and loss, commitment and betrayal, and endings and new beginnings. The nonlinear storyline explores the actions of a husband and wife when events upend, and then tragically end, their marriage. A slow reveal in the second chapter offers glimpses of the frayed fabric enwrapping the relationship, and discloses events earlier in the marriage that led the husband to make the decision the wife finds so tragic. The story’s coda integrates themes from the first two c...

I picked this book because I wanted to read something from the Morning News' Tournament of Books and it fit my criteria of being short, not too depressing, and leaning towards sci-fi. I don't read a lot of new fiction, usually content to read what has been recommended by friends or by the test of time. The fact that this book was written in collaboration between two authors was also intriguing.This book is a fast read, despite being basically a meditation on grief and life changes. The story fo...