Early Riser by Jasper Fforde Book Review

2.5/5 stars

Jasper Fforde’s 2018 cli-fi dystopian mystery novel Early Riser introduces a future world set in Wales in which global warming has caused extreme winters of under -40°C. Society must now hibernate through the winter by using a drug called Morphenox which causes dreamless and prolonged sleep. However, it does leave some users as “nightwalkers,” which is a pacific zombielike state. Charlie Worthing works as a Deputy Winter Consul who must stay awake during the winter to look after the hibernation towers. He soon becomes embroiled in a pharmaceutical maneuver and must do what he can to keep himself alive.

Written in a sardonic tone, the worldbuilding is intended to be vast and enveloping. There are many elements to it—class struggles, Morpehnox issues, reasons for childbearing, political (or geographical? Not quite clear) alliances, corporate greed, futuristic folklore, and more. However, there are not many explanations to this world, and it is built through bits and scraps of information handed out irregularly to the reader. There are supposed to be a lot of details to this world but it leaves much to be desired; there are not enough explanations to warrant so much worldbuilding. There seems to be a lot going on yet most of it connects tenuously or not at all and not much of it makes any sense or follows any logic. This keeps the reader from truly understanding the world in the depth that the author intended. Additionally, there’s very little description of landscape or the weather to really drive home the snowed-in frozen country which these characters inhabit (or try to inhabit because it’s supposedly so cold and isolating). The writing is too sarcastic for its own good—all characters exhibit the same unworried and caustic personality and therefore all fall flat. The book incorporates footnotes; however, they are full of ironic remarks that are only a continuation of the writing’s sardonicism rather than helpful.

The pace of the book is slow, yet towards the end it picks up and gears towards a climax and an ending which is hurried and too short to justify the length of the book. However, because the pace tightens towards the end, the climax scene is interesting and makes one wish the entirety of the book had been written this way. Since the characters are flat and the world is full of gaps which the author does not seem aware of, the slow pacing is arduous. The beginning and the ending of the book are fine—the beginning is of course an introduction to this futuristic Wales yet is quickly wears off its charm by not providing enough information, and as mentioned the ending has a much more natural pace. The plot in the middle of the books is carried forward mainly by the main character’s idiotic personality and narrowly escaping problems and situations through mere stupidity.

This book is inventive but not enough, as it doesn’t back up its own claims to imagining a dense futuristic world affected by climate change. The book switches focus often, first on nightwalkers and later on strange dreams and later on to folk figures yet all of this is flimsy and the grasp on inner-story logic is mild. Perpetually tongue-in-cheek, at times this tone hits well and some parts are genuinely funny; most are not.

I do not recommend this book. The premise of the book was promising yet its execution was not.

by Catalina Bonati