The Dispatcher - John Scalzi

Sci-Fi/Mystery

Rating: 7.5/10

Imagine you are out for a walk with your spouse and as you stand at the edge of a cliff enjoying a spectacular view, all the irritations of day-to-day life flood in and you give them a push. Upon your return home, a newfound spring in your step, there they are. All the pieces put together again. 

This book unspools a fascinating premise, which in essence, bestows godlike powers of life and death on mere mortals.

Somewhere in the very near future, people who die of unnatural causes come back to life a split second later.  With a little help from a Dispatcher, they arrive unharmed, if confused, back at their home. Reset to a few hours before their untimely, and likely violent, demise. The stuff of miracles, right?  But what if it becomes a common occurrence in daily life? A workaround if you will.

Tony works as a Dispatcher in hospitals, putting bullets in the brains of patients deemed unsalvageable.  Giving them a second chance. One day he substitutes for another Dispatcher and gets pulled into something unimaginable.  Will the Dispatcher become the dispatched?

In any story that features people who come back from the dead, one must ask themselves, what gets left behind.  Surely something does…

Book Pairing(s): Nameless by Dean Koontz, The Oracle by Andrew Pyper, Cold Storage by David Koepp