Blind Spots - Thomas Mullen

Speculative Sci-Fi

Rating: 7/10

Seven years ago, everyone in the world went blind in a matter of months.  The miracle of technology stepped in to save the day, creating a device that approximates vision, downloading what it ‘sees’ directly to people’s brains. Unsurprisingly a nefarious entity of epic brilliance finds a way to hack it and alter what people are seeing. Then the murders start, and the suspects, well they are not what they appear to be. Same might be said about the cops.

Are you sensing my sarcasm here?  Sorry. Not sorry.

What is an intriguing premise fell rather flat in the telling.  The best speculative fiction has a degree of feasibility to the plot for the reader to latch onto.  Those that don’t face two risks, an abundance of exposition that tends to one, overwhelm the reader, or worse bore them senseless. And two, oversimplification at a level bound to cause irritability in the reader.  This book suffers from the second of these pitfalls.

You might be asking yourself why I, a self-professed hard marker when it comes to reviews, gave this as much as a seven?  The answer is simply, the characters.  They were interesting, dynamic, flawed, and well-drawn.  Ultimately worth hanging in for.

Book Pairing(s):Tell Me An Ending by Jo Harkin, Seven Visitations Of Sydney Burgess, The World Gives Way by Marissa Levin