January 1, 2023
This thrilling science fiction novel from Binge (Professor Everywhere) is full of exploration and intriguing thoughts about the true nature of life on Earth. When the story opens, readers hear from Ben Tunmore, whose brother Harry has been missing and presumed dead for 30 years. Harry's story is told in an episodic fashion, through a series of letters that the family finds in his room at the facility. The haunting story traces Harry's involvement with a secretive government agency, which asks him to determine if a friend of his can actually see the future. Intrigued, Harry wheedles his way further into the government investigation, eventually landing a spot on the next team to explore a massive mountain that has unexpectedly, suddenly, grown from the middle of the ocean. The story of that improbable and amazing ascent brings mystery and thrills as nothing is as it seems, and the implications for God and humanity are staggering. VERDICT An exciting story where the undiscovered wonders of Earth prove as exciting as those out in the galaxy.--Jeremiah Rood
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Starred review from February 13, 2023
The incredible premise of this superlative science fiction thriller from Binge (Professor Everywhere) gains credibility through the adroit presentation of the main narrative through letters and the pitch-perfect characterization of the brilliant lead, Harold Tunmore, who’s haunted by a fatal error caused by his own arrogance. Harold, a British surgical consultant turned physicist, disappeared in 1990, leaving his family bereft. In 2019, long after Harold was declared legally dead, his brother, Ben, is stunned to hear from a friend that he thought he’d spotted Harold in a psychiatric hospital near Surrey. Ben reunites with his sibling, who seems out of it and dies by self-immolation soon afterward. Ben finds a collection of Harold’s letters, which recount his participation in a covert expedition to the Pacific in 1991 to investigate a mountain, only recently discovered, which dwarfs the Himalayas. The sudden appearance of the massive structure proves to be just one of the mysteries Harold and his colleagues tackle at risk to their sanity and their lives. Binge’s superlative imagining of how the mind-blowing scientific discoveries, which have global implications, would affect his characters elevates this above similar genre fiction. Admirers of Michael Marshall Smith’s The Anomaly will be riveted. Agent: Alexandra Machinist, ICM Partners.
March 1, 2023
In 1991, British scientist Harold Tunmore and an international crew have their minds blown and lives threatened after being summoned to a gigantic mountain in the South Pacific that bizarrely appeared out of nowhere. From the start, Harold and his colleagues have reasons to be nervous about the expedition. Their anonymous sponsors, possibly military, refuse to divulge pertinent information--including what happened to those who didn't survive a previous visit to the mountain and why one who did-Harold's lamented ex-wife-remains there in a starkly incommunicative state. But once the group begins the treacherous task of climbing the mountain in the frostbite-rendering cold, there is no turning back. The higher they climb, the weirder things get. People start acting strangely, turning on each other in sometimes violent fashion. Some of them disappear after slipping through what are revealed to be folds in time and space. (Scary tentacled creatures await them.) Harold starts having memories that aren't his. Increasingly, he enters into a volatile state of consciousness in which his personal failures--notably his long-ago neglect of his wife and adopted son--play out against psychedeliclike religious visions. The novel opens with Harold's brother, Ben, finding him in a psychiatric hospital nearly 30 years after Harold went missing and was declared dead. The story unfolds through a series of unsent letters Ben finds in Harold's room, written back in 1991 to Ben's then-teenage daughter. At its best, the book is a cross between Journey to the Center of the Earth and Heart of Darkness. But it needs a less whiny protagonist to serve its mega-reflections on the meaning of life and the future of mankind and doesn't do enough with supporting characters, especially a renowned female Russian biologist. An entertaining SF thriller that's unable to catch up to its vision.
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March 1, 2023
From the Scottish author of the sf mystery Professor Everywhere (2020) comes this account of attorney Ben Tunmore, who discovers that his brother Harold, a scientist who disappeared 30 years before and was presumed dead, is in fact living in a psychiatric hospital. Rushing to see Harold, Ben finds him alert but unstable. When Harold commits suicide a few weeks later, he leaves behind dozens of unsent letters, which form the bulk of the novel. These letters explain what broke Harold: a secret quest to explore an incredible mountain that had suddenly appeared in the Pacific. What terror did he and his companions find at the top? Ascension is a pastiche of august influences. The epistolary structure is borrowed from Dracula. The doomed expedition that drives Harold mad is akin to H. P. Lovecraft's At the Mountains of Madness. Even the frame of Ben publishing his brother's wild tale is reminiscent of the children's classic Bunnicula. Binge earns his place among these literary lights with an expert story of creeping dread and cosmological horror.
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