The Fold by Peter Clines

The Fold by Peter Clines

This book whet my appetite in the very first chapter and then introduced a wonderful science fiction mystery that promised to be a full and glorious meal. Unfortunately, instead of the banquet I was anticipating, the main course proved to be a lot of hollow sugary pastries.

 

First the good: This novel starts out as cerebral science fiction at its very best. There is a mystery out there and we know from chapter one that people are being hurt by it. As the chapters unfold it becomes apparent that the world may be in jeopardy—not from cataclysm but through a subtle juxtaposition that would cause ever increasing amounts of chaos and distress to societies across the planet.

 

That’s awesome and the hero is extremely well suited to uncover the root of the problem. Mike has a fully eidetic memory and Clines has conceptualized what that means better than any author I have ever read. Mike’s ability to sort through vast amounts of information quickly and decisively was amazing. The psychic damage that never being able to forget anything does to him was also a brilliantly insightful addition to the tale. I always enjoyed the scenes where his mind spins into gear and starts making connections, although frankly I wondered why it was so difficult for him to come to a conclusion that I reached in chapter one.

 

Now the bad: Mike makes brilliant deductions throughout this book but we’re at least halfway through it before he begins to consider what every reader knows is happening from chapter one. Heck, one of the team of scientists is even a Star Trek fanatic but the solution (born right out of that series) never occurs to her. So that’s bad, but perhaps we have to accept it so that there is proper dramatic build up, the next problem was just flat out disappointing.

 

The last quarter of the book moves from being a fantastic mystery to a shoot-them-up standoff at the OK Corral. This was such a copout from the much subtler and frankly far scarier problem I had initially envisioned based on the idea of millions of juxtapositions ripping apart social ties throughout the planet. In many ways, that ending would have been far creepier because it would be very easy to imagine the government refusing to accept the evidence of disaster in favor of a highly lucrative economy-changing invention.

 

In summary, The Fold is a wonderful idea with a highly disappointing ending.