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A review by incipientdreamer
The Ferryman by Justin Cronin
1.5
<b>1.5 stars</b>
Justin Cronin saw the red pill/blue pill scenario and proceeded to choke on both pills at once.
The premise for <i>The Ferryman</i> sounds amazing, a cross between The Matrix and The Island, however, the premise is the only thing Cronin has to offer. Reading this made me feel as if Cronin got this cool idea and wanted to run with it. But he just didn't have enough meat for the bones of the story to carry on. The book starts interesting. Speculative fiction is my favourite genre. It is weird and strange and believe me I love weird books. The more a book confuses me the more I get into it, but the second half of the book just unravels and ends up being exceedingly disappointing. He aims to make a statement on classism and fascism but his book ends up harmfully endorsing the very things. Gross, uncomfortable and an absolutely horrible experience. It had the hallmarks of a pseudo-intellectual undergrad stroking his chin and thinking he wrote the most philosophically groundbreaking "woke" novel.
The characters are some of the most boring humans ever. They have no substance to them and I did not care about any of them. At one point the running theory I had was that Proctor with his main character syndrome is the main character and everyone else is an NPC given how lifeless and robotic they seem. The female characters made it obvious that this was a book written by a man, they fall into archetypes, they are nothing more than a daughter/wife/mother because that is all women can be, something in relation to a man. Imagine my lack of surprise whenThea ended up being pregnant .
The whole plot made no sense whatsoever, the explanations which the reader kind of guesses early on but would still like to know the WHY of is explained in a hand-wavy exposition dump that does not stand under the scrutiny of the minutest logic.
The villains who we are supposed to be afraid of seem not threatening at all because, once again, there is no logic to their actions and they just come across as dumb and petty.
Why did they think creating a police state would ever be a good idea? The whole motivation behind the story is, and I kid you not, that <b>poor people need to be oppressed and treated like slaves because it builds character and makes them stronger for the next hardship</b>. Like are you fucking kidding me?? What kind of a message is that?? Justin Cronin read "fuck the rich" and proceeded to give the rich a blowjob? The anti-state and anti-capitalist premise that he builds up in the first half of the book falls apart under the very classist and sexist overtones he ends up expressing as part of the main conclusion to the conflict. The reviewer who DNFed this early on stating that the book seems to be propagating classism was so spot on, I can't believe I got catfished by the premise and the first half.
Talking about sexism, you have a grieving heavily traumatised woman and instead of helping her heal by giving her therapeutic help, you proceed to put her in a coma and continue to live in the very essence of a blue pill ending, when you have been advocating the audience to open their goddamn eyes and smell the shitshow.
About that ending the bad guys woke up from the cryo-induced coma, saw that the planet they had landed on was very cold (think Finland) and decided that that sucks so we are gonna go back into the coma, not wake anyone up and fuck up everyone's dreams because <b>the dream weather is nicer :)</b> WTF kind of logic is that??? why would anyone do that?? I did not understand them at all, did they hate the rich or did they hate the poor, or did they just hate winters??
The writing was nothing remarkable either. And I do not mean that it wasn't flowery or pretty so that makes it shit. The sentences felt flat and there was no heart to it. The overuse of exclamation points made me want to bash someone's head in. I don't know how Cronin managed to fuck up so badly and I have no idea how this made it onto bestseller lists or was even allowed to be published. Men can get away with anything huh?
Justin Cronin saw the red pill/blue pill scenario and proceeded to choke on both pills at once.
The premise for <i>The Ferryman</i> sounds amazing, a cross between The Matrix and The Island, however, the premise is the only thing Cronin has to offer. Reading this made me feel as if Cronin got this cool idea and wanted to run with it. But he just didn't have enough meat for the bones of the story to carry on. The book starts interesting. Speculative fiction is my favourite genre. It is weird and strange and believe me I love weird books. The more a book confuses me the more I get into it, but the second half of the book just unravels and ends up being exceedingly disappointing. He aims to make a statement on classism and fascism but his book ends up harmfully endorsing the very things. Gross, uncomfortable and an absolutely horrible experience. It had the hallmarks of a pseudo-intellectual undergrad stroking his chin and thinking he wrote the most philosophically groundbreaking "woke" novel.
The characters are some of the most boring humans ever. They have no substance to them and I did not care about any of them. At one point the running theory I had was that Proctor with his main character syndrome is the main character and everyone else is an NPC given how lifeless and robotic they seem. The female characters made it obvious that this was a book written by a man, they fall into archetypes, they are nothing more than a daughter/wife/mother because that is all women can be, something in relation to a man. Imagine my lack of surprise when
The whole plot made no sense whatsoever, the explanations which the reader kind of guesses early on but would still like to know the WHY of is explained in a hand-wavy exposition dump that does not stand under the scrutiny of the minutest logic.
The villains who we are supposed to be afraid of seem not threatening at all because, once again, there is no logic to their actions and they just come across as dumb and petty.
Why did they think creating a police state would ever be a good idea? The whole motivation behind the story is, and I kid you not, that <b>poor people need to be oppressed and treated like slaves because it builds character and makes them stronger for the next hardship</b>. Like are you fucking kidding me?? What kind of a message is that?? Justin Cronin read "fuck the rich" and proceeded to give the rich a blowjob? The anti-state and anti-capitalist premise that he builds up in the first half of the book falls apart under the very classist and sexist overtones he ends up expressing as part of the main conclusion to the conflict. The reviewer who DNFed this early on stating that the book seems to be propagating classism was so spot on, I can't believe I got catfished by the premise and the first half.
Talking about sexism, you have a grieving heavily traumatised woman and instead of helping her heal by giving her therapeutic help, you proceed to put her in a coma and continue to live in the very essence of a blue pill ending, when you have been advocating the audience to open their goddamn eyes and smell the shitshow.
About that ending
The writing was nothing remarkable either. And I do not mean that it wasn't flowery or pretty so that makes it shit. The sentences felt flat and there was no heart to it. The overuse of exclamation points made me want to bash someone's head in. I don't know how Cronin managed to fuck up so badly and I have no idea how this made it onto bestseller lists or was even allowed to be published. Men can get away with anything huh?